The Black Channel Thinks It Knows What Germans Think About Total Surveillance

Spiegel columnist Jan Fleischhauer - whose weekly articles are published under the name "Der schwarze Kanal" (the black channel) translated last weeks piece and published it on zero hedge under the name "What Germany Thinks Of 'The Biggest Bugging Scandal In History". Black is the color of Merkels party the CDU and its Bavarian sister the CSU. But one actually does not even get the view of those two parties in the column. 

The conservative parties are divided on the issue: while  Federal Minister of the Interior Friedrich (CSU) is all for foreign governments collecting data on basically all German conversations, his party leader Seehofer said that German politicians should "use all chances for a rigid and strict protection of privacy." let's step back a little: in 2007 CDU, CSU, and SPD pushed through a law  to collect all meta data for six months from every German. The only institution in Germany that has any interests in protecting constitutional rights, the Federal Constitutional Court, struck down that law in 2010. We actually still have to get a such a  law to collect all meta data, because the EU, just like the CDU/CSU, is obviously scared of European/German citizens and to that end issued a directive (let's call it the data mining directive) to do so. Of course, in order to pretend that there is a rule of law the data could only be retrieved if a court, agreed.  We all now know how that went with FISC in the US. Anyways, Seehofer now seems to be moving away from the total data mining idea. FinMin Schäuble, who failed miserably at stopping right wing terror while he was minister of the interior (a man of many talents, I guess), claimed that we were "in part able to prevent acts of terror in Germany due to information from America" and argued against getting "agitated too early" (in what can only be understood as a warning that there is more to come).  The CSU "Mittelstandsunion" (small firms union) feared that the NSA is possibly conducting industrial espionage in Germany. But of course there is no division on the issue that CDU/CSU do not like to be watched by "Big Brother" themselves. Even the former socialist youth secretary for agitation and propaganda in the Stasi state, Frau Merkel had her spokesperson say on that issue that we aren't in the cold war anymore. Of course there was *crickets* from Merkel on the matter of constitutional rights of citizens.

The SPD was six years ago also a big fan of destroying constitutional rights. Today there seems to be no party official that is happy with the spying of the US. For example, the party leader of the SPD, Germany's second biggest and formerly left wing party, Gabriel, not only claimed that Merkel knew, to which a spokesperson said that that is "cynical" (IMO implying that the SPD leadership was also informed), he also wanted to allow Snowden to come to Germany under a witness protection program. The Greens are very much on the side of the SPD on the issue.

What comes as a surprise to me is that there seem to be some remnants of actual liberalism left in the FDP in the person of the Federal Minister of Justice Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. The party "The Pirates" (not making this up) is the one which will profit the most from the revelations. It has been in self-destruct mode for years now, but it is the only party that actually really cares about citizen rights and freedom off- and online. It seemed unlikely that it could make the 5 % hurdle only a few weeks ago, but the more people like Merkel talk about the Internet being virgin territory for everybody and defend spying by foreign entities on German citizens, the higher the chances for them to be part of the next Bundestag.The euro skeptical party AfD reminded Merkel "that she has to not only act in the interest of the government, but also for the whole German population" because she did not say a word about citizens being spied on.

The German industry is deeply worried that the USA is under the guise of preventing terror conducting industrial espionage. The VDMA (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau - German Engineering Federation) manager for product and know-how protection Rainer Glantz said that "specially the focus [of the  spying] on the West and the South of Germany, where many hidden champions are located, raises the concern, that targeted industrial espionage is being conducted."

In the media there seems to be - except for that one poor Spiegel columnist above, who had to pretend that he actually fears terror in Germany and the Welt, who is still actually buying that terrorism story and getting ripped apart by their own commenters for it - pretty much universal criticism of the program led of course by Spiegel, even Bild, hard right tabloid and biggest "newspaper" in Europe, asked: "Is the NSA really worse than the Stasi?"  and had an "expert" conclude: YES!

A new poll asked if Germans see the USA as trustworthy partner. 49 % agreed down from 65 %. The lowest result since Bush left office. The backlash in Germany is so large that, even if the US ever really captured a terrorist through prism, the country has to expect higher losses than gain from the program. With less than half of the Germans believing that the USA is a trustworthy partner, one can expect that this will actually affect US companies, too. In a few months, one will have the choice to either invite total NSA surveillance into ones home or buy the Sony PS4 if one wants a new console, for example. The X-Box One sales can be expected to be hit very hard because of this. Really, Microsoft is a collaborator and the only way this ends is if their revenue is hit hard. Choosing the PS4 over the largely similar X-Box One is the obvious choice if one does not want an always-on camera and microphone in one's living room. Moving away from Windows and using Linux based operation systems is a must for all German companies since MS informed the NSA about security bugs before patching them.

ECB Already Lost Its Independence

Euro area inflation was 1.6 % in June, therefore beneath the close to two percent that the ECB targets. A normal central bank would now lower the base rate. Sadly, there is nothing ordinary about the ECB. Its goal is not to keep inflation close to a certain target anymore. Weidmann et. al. try to and are successful at enforcing so called "reform pressure" aka making sure that the pain in the crisis countries stays high.

A while ago Weidmann compared economics to engineering:

And much as engineers are accused of making buildings that are not earthquake-resistant, economists are accused of building design flaws into the financial and economic system, with whole nations now suffering under the consequences.

 Of course he forgot to mention that design flaws in buildings in fact lead to real life consequences for the engineer. For example the engineer who was responsible for the collapse of the roof of an ice rink in Bad Reichenhall was sentenced to 18 months prison on probation. We have strong evidence that austerity is not only self-defeating, but causes deaths, too. That is what was to be expected when one forces other countries to reduce their health care expenditure. This policy causes Greece to become more like the USA, and not the other way round. The ECB officials know that 40 % of the population have been pushed out of health insurance on demand of the troika (of course nobody is responsible for anything as always). Greek hospitals now look much more like third world clinics, lacking even the most basic utensils and medicine. An engineer responsible for something like this would definitely not be running around claiming that we need less structural integrity more structural reforms; he would be in prison.

This is the bitter reality Weidmann's "reform pressure" and he wants to keep it up. So again, even though inflation is below target he refuses to agree to a lower base rate. According to Spiegel, Weidmann and Asmussen "reasoned" strongly against sound and independent central bank policy in favor of senseless pain and death. Peter Praet and Mario Draghi actually wanted to lower the fixed rate to 0.25 %. But let's not forget the Netherlands, who are in recession, but still Klaas Knot was also against the ECB actually trying to fulfil its mandate. Hopefully, our NSA overlords or a whistle blower soon releases those "arguments" against a lower base rate. I have a few ideas what they might have been:

"Guys! I just read about this woman in Greece [sadly a true story], who cannot afford treatment for her breast cancer, because we destroyed  the welfare beast in Greece. It now has breached her skin and is wetting her clothes. Guys! We shouldn't lower the fixed rate, since that is just hilarious!"

"Guys! Lowering the base rate now, reduces the chances for a European Breaking Bad in the future, and I love that show!"

"Guys! Just realized that if we turn southern Europe into third world countries, vacations for us Germans will become cheaper."

"Guys! People having access to pain-killers in hospitals is the road to serfdom!!1!" 

Of course, Weidmann, Knot and Asmussen are fully aware that austerity has horrible consequences, but sadly it is unlikely that they accept any responsibility for the outcome whatsoever.  So it is much more likely that the arguments went something like this:

"Yada, yada competitiveness bla bla structural reforms yada yada risk .... political independence ... future inflation .... unit labor costs. Slippery slope!

Meanwhile in the real world, even Germany is becoming less competitive because - fun fact - today's investment is tomorrow's competitiveness and domestic new orders for investment goods released on Friday were at the lowest level since July 2010. In fact, if there is no improvement soon 2013 will look much like 2005 on investment. Germany will most likely not see any growth this year, all the talk about the successful structural reforms is just that. Of course, neither the German government nor economists will claim responsibility for stagnation. They will blame Greece, Spain, and I guess China, and point out that others are doing worse than Germany.

The ECB has become the slave of a policy designed to destroy the welfare state and the people responsible for that will tell everybody, that is not yet sick of their denial of reality, that they fear for central bank independence. They want the crisis to continue ("reform pressure") to implement their  dystopian fantasy where everybody is totally free of a safety net, and most likely a job, while at the same time every step is being watched by surveillance algorithms to keep us them safe. They will keep on telling us about new agendas, that - by structurally reforming away even more jobs - will lead to growth, somehow increasing the confidence of the private sector. Every bad outcome will be blamed on lacking willingness to reform. That will keep us off the road to serfdom!

An idea failing as miserably as neo-liberalism would be dead in engineering. But these people are still respected economists causing pain, suffering, and death everywhere they can, while blaming everybody else for their vision failing to deliver positive results. So make no mistake the ECB is not independent anymore. It, on behalf of the German government, pushes through an economic model everywhere in Southern Europe, that is based on the silly assumption state bad - private good. The unwillingness to lower the fixed rate, even though inflation has been significantly lower than the targeted 2 % shows that there is no interest in actually ending, or at least reducing the damage caused by the crisis in the minds of many ECB officials.The worst crisis since the WWII has turned into a necessary tool to achieve more privatisation and less welfare state. These aren't actual structural reforms. They are using a hammer to wipe out every achievement of the last decades and in the meantime they tell us it is for our own good, and we are letting them get away with it.

'Muricans Y U Help SPD?

That is actually the wrong question, but one that needs an answer nonetheless. Merkel has been such a loyal servant of the USA in fact she would have gone to Iraq with you if she had had the chance back then, and now this? the US is spying on us just as much as on Iran, and calling us third class partners, according to Spiegel. This just might impact the election result in September, since Merkel and Interior minister Friedrich did not handle the initial revelations well a few weeks ago. We'll see, but the SPD would have to act like it were election campaign time for once.

The right question is: why is the US spying on us more than in any other European country? The terrorism nonsense is just that, and some Americans are actually aware that Hitler died a while ago, and since then we have played nice with our tanks. So is the NSA conducting industry espionage? That would at least make more sense than finding out every single day that Germans kinda liked the US until this weekend.

The comments seem divided between "good, that we have a big brother watching over us *snark*" -> "the US is no friend", and "third class? Fuck off 'Muricans. We need new friends." Guess it is time to spy some more on the German government to find out if Merkel is happy to share all her secrets with the NSA. Last time a Bundeskanzler was betrayed by a friend who abused his trust to spy on him, he had the common decency to resign.

It will be a few interesting weeks. The timing could not have been better. Since, Merkel time and time again has shown that she follows public opinion, this just might have actual consequences. There was no way at all that the SPD could win the election in September until today. Merkel knows that she cannot side with the US on this and that the population expects at least a strong message. Therefore she cannot tolerate this and since Friedrich went out on a limb by calling critics of PRISM "anti-American" and "naive" my guess is that he is now more of a liability than anything else, and she gets rid of those fast.

I just hope this brakes the neck of the pseudo-liberal FDP, who have given up any interest in freedom other than "economic freedom", a long time ago. That would be the best that can come from this.

EU Terrorists

We all know that a) PRISM only targets terrorists and b) you are one if you have something to hide. As it turns out, according to Spiegel, the EU are a bunch of terrorists that want to keep their secret plots for themselves. The NSA is, of course, acting only within the law of the USA, and would never spy on allies, if they didn't have good reason to believe that this would prevent the next attack. We know that PRISM has already prevented 50 plots. Let me emphasise that again: exactly 50 terrorist attacks have been prevented, and unlike the 7 billion the Irish bankers wanted, that isn't a number that was picked out of somebody's arse.

German Minister of the Interior Friedrich called critics of the program "naive" and "anti-American". In an interview with Welt am Sonntag he also said that he has no reason to believe that the NSA is not adhering to law and order. Oh wait, was like sooo two weeks ago. Today his naive and anti-American-terrorist party colleague Manfred Weber (according to Spiegel he is also a "security expert"- I guess the skill ceiling isn't all that high in that area of expertise) complained about the NSA spying on EU citizens politicians because it is "unacceptable if their everyday lives a spied upon". Coalition partner Brok assessed that it is difficult to "negotiate if you have to be affraid that your position is wiretapped."Riiight! If that were what's happening we could end up buying drones for hundreds of millions that are not allowed to fly in European airspace, or something.

My position is that bugging EU officials shows that the private sector is much more efficient than anything government does. It is obviously a waste of time to spy on these people. The decision finding process within the EU is totally randomized. What does it help to know that the insight, that structural reforms solve every problem, was developed by banging one's head against a wall for an hour, which also led to the believe "Americans: FRIENDS!"?

Merkel, you will most likely be reelected please, please, please choose ministers that don't say stuff that is stupid when they say it and becomes utterly ridiculous two weeks afterwards. Also, you might want to get rid of the person that said:

The internet is for us all new land

 And went on to explain that it is about a balance of security interests and - I kid you not - "easygoingness". Oh hmmm wait, that was Merkel herself. Well, I guess that the lightheartedness of EU officials is over, which is good, since perhaps their next plot to destroy the lives of even more citizens in Europe, can be stopped with the help of our "American friends".

CO2 Regulation - the Role of "Super-Credits"

The German government is responsible for blocking the vote on EU regulation aiming to reduce CO2 emissions of cars. The plan was to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced on average by new automobiles from 130 g (CO2) per kilometer to 95 g/km in 2020. The primary reason for this decision was that Merkel did not agree with the plan of how to implement the so called "super-credits" (SC) - a scheme to allow for zero (and very low) emission cars to be counted twice until the year 2020. By 2023 the current plan gets rid of SC. Merkel wants higher and longer lasting SC. The decision of the German government  to prevent this new regulation of coming to effect is absolutely correct (probably the first time I wholeheartedly agree with Merkel).

There is not much potential left to make conventional engines more efficient, and the closer we get to the optimum the more expensive innovation becomes, and the less progress it yields. Currently, there is, because of regulation, a worldwide trend to hybrids which have a much higher potential of reducing fuel consumption in the NEDC test cycle than in real life. I would say that a realistic goal for the current mix of petrol and diesel cars will be about 130 g(CO2)/km (120 g(CO2)/km for hybrids) on average by 2020. To reach the 95 g (CO2)/km there is no way around zero emission vehicles.

Especially BMW and Daimler would have been affected by the new regulation, since they produce mostly "premium" aka large, powerful, and expensive vehicles. AUDI, being a brand of VW, would not have had such problems since the average emissions are measured over the whole company fleet of produced cars.

This policy is trying to get rid of SUVs of course it is supported by the German green party - unthinkingly, as always. Party whip Künast called Merkels action "torpedoing" and "smashing" the compromise. It is actually really sad that these people are unable to think straight then it comes to the automotive industry, since higher and longer lasting SC in Europe would support the development of electric cars, and additionally companies would have incentives to make them cheaper to support larger vehicles. BMW and Daimler would most likely even accept some losses on electric cars, since that would allow them to sell more premium vehicles like the X6 or the GLK, while still being able to remain within the new regulation. The current plan is especially wrongheaded since the companies would be able to sell these cars in other countries. It would not make sense to increase capacity in Europe, so production will be reduced in Europe and overall the worldwide emissions would not be reduced significantly.
  
Let's see what effect SC would have on a car producer: our company produces 100 cars - 90 of which are conventional vehicles with an average emission of 130 g/km and 10 are zero emission vehicles. So the calculation for SC of 2 would be (130 g/km x 90 cars + 0 x 10 cars)/ (90 cars + 10 x 2 zero emission cars). The company would therefore have a current average of around 106 g/km. To achieve the goal of 95 g/km our firm could either produce 70 % more electric vehicles or by increasing the price of their conventional cars and increase the waiting time for European customers so they only sell 56 instead of 90. Increasing the SC to 3 would bring our company down to 97.5 g/km so they would only have to try to increase the sales by 10 %. Assuming the proposal numbers for 2023 our company would have to more than triple the electric car production.

Of course, we currently do not know how well electric cars will be received. In my above example I assume a little over 10 % . That would be a great success. Super credits have the potential to increase the production capacity of zero emission vehicles, and also give companies an incentive to accept lower profit margins on these, therefore Merkel was right to stop the current proposal. By 2023 we will be only seeing the second generation of zero emission vehicles from large companies, it is unrealistic to assume that they will make up over 30 % of the total production by then, and it would only be reasonable to expect that in 10 years the laws of physics still apply, so 95 g(CO2)/km can only be achieved through super credits. Of course, it will not be real 95 g(CO2) /km, but the proposal is not based in reality either. It is just not possible to get to that number in ten years. I really like BMW's i3 please give it an actual chance.

Krugman commented a few days ago on Obama's environmental policy: "Well, ask yourself first how, exactly, pollution regulations are supposed to destroy jobs." Well, Professor if one decides to get rid of larger cars altogether with not giving any way out while other countries like the USA and China actually do offer the possibility to support SUVs and large luxory sedans via zero emission vehicles, then you will endanger jobs in Germany. So the EU is again an example of awful - this time - environmental policy with an actual potential to destroy jobs in Europe. Now to be fair Krugman was talking about the US, who do have a decent policy when it comes to electric cars. Please, EU do the right thing for once, and implement higher super credits over a longer time frame.

European Car Sales in May

The passenger car sales in Europe, which seemed to improve in April (mostly due to the early easter), have "reached" (down 5.9 % yoy) the "lowest level recorded for a month of May since 1993", according to ACEA. Every major market in Europe was down compared to last year, except for Great Britain, were car sales increased by 11 %. Not that this will help the country, since they do not have an actual car industry (safe for German owned brands which are for the most part also designed in Germany) of their own anymore thanks to it being structurally reformed away by neo-liberal geniuses.

So why was Germany hit so hard? Private car registrations for Golf/Jetta, the best selling car in Germany, increased by 33 % compared to last year. So consumers are willing to to make large investments, again. Companies aren't though, here Golf/Jetta registrations fell by over 23 %, overall 20 881  (down 5.8 % yoy) were registered in Germany in May, 11,777 commercial and 9,104 private.  Of the eight "best-selling" cars bought by companies only two did not see double digit losses; four had decreases of over 20 %. Opel/Vauxhall Astra is in sixth place with over a third less sales than last year. Only the BMW 1 series, which came in ninth place, was registered 21 % more often, and the tenth placed Audi A3 saw a tiny 0.2 % increase.

Still some might claim that the awful numbers were due to the "Abwrackprämie", a scheme to help the suffering automotive industry in 2009. The federal government paid € 2,500 to every person that brought his old car to the junkyard and bought a new one. A program similar to other programs in Europe. Of course as one can see above this is not the case, since demand of companies and not consumers is lacking.

What can be done about this situation? First we must be clear that this is a structural problem, also it is only a symptom of the euro crisis. The demand has been falling everywhere in Europe for such a long time now that schemes to prop up short terms sales will not be a solution. In 2009 such programs did make sense to help suppliers survive, but today unlike back then it is not a worldwide short term phenomenon. Car manufactuerers that are based in Europe but operate globally have not been hit that hard. BMW Group, for example, sold more cars in May than ever before. The companies that are affected the most are therefore PSA, Opel/Vauxhall, and Renault. The last is in better shape since they foresaw the trend to cheaper cars and their brand Dacia is doing fine. Opel is in my opinion utterly redundant. The GM brand almost did not survive the initial crisis and is still losing money for its parent corporation. My short term solution is that Opel needs to disappear. . Since European politicians are absolutely unwilling to do necessary steps to solve the crisis, reducing supply is the only thing that can be done right now. Germany should take the hit. Killing Opel is by no means an optimal solution. It is in fact no solution whatsoever, but it is the only way to avoid worsening of the crisis in France. 

The only real solution would be to end the mess in the eurozone, but our "leadership" is incapable of even doing the first real steps for us to return to growth and are still in a state of denial about the complete failure of their policies since 2008. But hey, after tons of "stress tests - that didn't. and new programs to reduce youth unemployment - that won't, we will now get a banking union - that isn't. Guess it is time to accept the new normal of being behind the curve at all times, so the new normal will be "structurally reforming" supply.

A Hunter is Switching His Prey

The German trade imbalances with the rest of the euro area are basically gone. The country exported commodities worth € 34.5 billion into other member states and the imports were also 34.5 billion in April according to destatis. This is mostly due to exports falling faster than imports (don't get fooled by the April numbers we had 2 work days more than last year January-April exports to euro area nations fell 2.0 % compared to last year while imports fell 0.7 %).  What probably not a lot of people had on their radar was that the overall trade imbalances of Germany not only remained unaffected, but actually increased a little compared to last year.

So, instead of preying on our neighbours (well, France is still in our crosshair -39,7 billion in 2012 don't go away in a few months) , we are now dependent on US citizens to keep on electing the kind of officials they have in this century, forever? And if the euro strengthens, are we going to see more "structural reforms" aka. beggar thy neighbour? Until the social safety net is totally gone?

We are becoming even more dependent on other countries. The gap between domestic and abroad new orders has been widening, and the lacking domestic demand should be worrying the government. It isn't though. What does one expect from a government, that wants 1.000.000 electric vehicles on German roads by 2020 and is unwilling to do anything whatsoever to make that possible.

Still, the discussion in German politics at the moment is, if increasing taxes or reducing spending is the bestest austerity (someone has to think about the next generation). Really, neither leech nor bleed guy offer an actual solution. No, both don't even understand that being utterly dependent on others buying our exports just isn't a stable system.

At least the development in the eurozone is somewhat acceptable, but I am unwilling to celebrate that German exports to those countries are falling faster than our imports.

IMF Y U BEING SILLY?

So the IMF did something what zerohedge called "admitt[ing] that not only is it an idiot (this was public knowledge) but also a liar." Wouldn't it be funny if the second paragraph in the report was in support of zerohedge's allegations? 

Here is an excerpt:

Real GDP growth  averaged 4 percent from 2000–07, higher than in all euro area countries save Ireland and Luxembourg. Although asset price inflation  and  household  indebtedness    remained   moderate, government  debt  mounted  rapidly.

Here is a picture of  rapidly mounting debt in that time frame. For some reason the IMF forgot to provide it. At least they are right about one year...

The competence of the troika is amazing:

Inflation  initially  overshot   the program  projection due to the indirect tax increases, but subsequently  came  down   as activity  weakened.

They forgot that significantly increasing the value added tax will be inflationary. Come on really? You were the ones enforcing the hike, so it might have been called for to think about the consequences of your own actions. That's just embarrassing. Of course, they got zero numbers right, and some others, as we all know, primarily unemployment and GDP, totally wrong. Still, there would not have been much thinking involved. It could have gone like this: if we increase the VAT of everything by let's say 2-4 %, and assume some price rigidity. What will happen?

In the end they ask themselves the wrong questions, since they even fail at their assumptions:

Structural reforms were clearly essential to restoring competitiveness.

NO. This should have been a question formulated like this: did structural reforms improve competitiveness? The answer is all over the report. No they did not. Look at paragraph 41 for example where the IMF hoped that a "boost in productivity" would follow structural reforms, that did not happen.  Read your own damn report. Paragraph by paragraph it is a demonstration that structural reforms delivered nothing but pain and suffering. No that is not quite right. It also shows that competitiveness (if there were only more firm level agreements, then everything would be fine and dandy wouldn't it?) was adversely affected. But hey at least the pensions are back on track so Greece does not have to worry anymore about a crisis that might  (IMF projections don't seem all that believable anymore) have happened  somewhere around 2060 [that' probably not the right tense, but you get the picture].

So what exactly has the troika achieved? It has helped tanking the Greek GDP by a staggering 20 %. The unemployment rate is unacceptable, and the debt still unsustainable, so another haircut is unavoidable. It has effectively worsened a already bad situation.

Learning German Neoliberal Edition

German is a difficult to learn, in my opinion, there are more exceptions than words that follow rules. But learning neoliberal (or ordo-liberal) speak is pretty simple. Anybody can do it. It is based on putting together random words in a way that does not make sense, plus adding in one the few actual vocables that exist in that language at any spot in the sentence where one wants it. Here is an example by Graf Lambsdorff:

Die Strohfeuer staatlicher Konjunkturprogramme bringen mittelfristig wenig bis nichts - außer weiter steigenden Schulden.

Translated it says: Straw fire stimulus= more debt = bad. That sentence is basically the whole mantra of neoliberal thinking in the crisis. But to be really good at it a few more sentences help:

Erhöhter Reformdruck ist dabei unerlässlich.

The word by word translation to this is "increased reform pressure is therefore essential" what it actually is, is an excuse for every bad outcome:

• Youth unemployment increases? Acceptable since it increases reform pressure.
• High risk premiums? Excellent sign of direct reform pressure.
• Stagnating industrial production? Increased reform pressure is necessary.

At the same time, it also shows your moral high ground. Those lazy Southerners need pressure to get anything done. One more:

Und es geht nicht nur um Sparen, sondern vor allem um die Freisetzung des Potenzials unserer Volkswirtschaften durch Strukturreformen.

Structural reforms liberate the potential of economies... stuff.. yadayada. See?  We already have reached the point where you don't even have to try to make sense. You can, knowing the above two sentences, start uttering gibberish, that isn't based in reality. Your policies have lead to a worse long term performance than during the great depression? Potential! More?

Dass dieser Ansatz Früchte trägt, zeigt sich am Beispiel der hoch verschuldeten Mitgliedsländer Irland, Spanien und Portugal.

Portugal, Spain, Ireland -> SUCCESS of neoliberal thinking (I am not making that up!)

Auch Industrieproduktion und Exporte kommen wieder in Fahrt.

Do I even have to translate that? It is pretending that complete stagnation for 13 years (perhaps that is a bit unfair, they can only be made directly responsible for the aweful last 3 years) is positive since in Spain the first derivative is up (the decrease in industrial production has decreased HELL YEAH!), and Portugal saw the first positive month  yoy in one and a half years.

 So, let's recap. Remember the above sentences and you are just the following words away from becoming either a very well payed member of the European parliament or perhaps even Bundesbank president:

• Strukturreform
• Reformdruck
• steigende Schulden
• Privatwirtschaft

It doesn't matter if one knows any other words. The whole believe system is not based in reality, so nobody will look at You funny if you say something like

Kratzs drruff die Struckturreform krum. Moar Reformdruck zack steigende Schulden. Privatwirtschaft fritz gut.

because there is no great neoliberal thinker out there that makes any more sense than that. Today the ECB corrected the already bad outlook for the euro zone down form -0,5 % GDP "growth" to -0,6 %, the German new orders were abysmal, and just that day some FDP politician comes along and tells us about the "success" of the policy responsible for that. Thanks. Next up: the European Commission applauds itself for 13 years of stagnation stability in industrial production.

Blockupy - update

Very short update on the Blockupy demonstration this weekend: you know that something went very wrong when according to Frankfurter Rundschau the Frankfurt BFE officers  (evidence gathering and arrest unit) - the specialists usually handling arrests during protests - describe the behavior of their colleagues from other states the following way: "they came, punched and drove home - and we now have to deal with the trouble" and "they acted in violation of BFE directives."