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Posted on 01/31/2026 7:10:37 AM PST by MtnClimber
We are witnessing before our eyes is the transformation of the German economy into a command economy.
Contrary to repeated assurances by the Federal Chancellor, the German state apparatus is growing at an accelerating pace. What we are witnessing before our eyes is the transformation of the economy into a command economy.
You may recall: In the days between last year’s federal election and the appointment of the new government, a political window opened in which Germany committed fundamental breaches of its own fiscal rules. The outgoing Bundestag decided on a redefinition of the debt brake and ultimately executed its substantive demise by outsourcing massive new debt.
The legitimization of financing gimmicks, the establishment of sectoral exemptions and special funds constitutes a fiscal original sin. It opens the door wide for the state to finance administration, the welfare system, and economic policy interventions with ever more debt. Taxpayers are left holding the bag for this budgetary deregulation, while capital markets -- thanks to the hypothetically unlimited backstop of the European Central Bank -- remain wide open. Fiat credit flows freely, the state sector expands, and in doing so crowds out the productive forces of society.
The Classic Bureaucracy-Reduction Rhetoric
Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz used this phase of political power vacuum in April to offer glimpses into his political agenda. Alongside well-worn political platitudes such as “switching into growth mode” and launching an “investment offensive,” one familiar media trope made its appearance: cutting bureaucracy.
At first glance, cutting bureaucracy sounds citizen-friendly and suggests a responsible approach to public finances. A lean state would be tangible proof of serious fiscal policy and a guarantee that the private sector -- the true engine of societal performance -- is not burdened unnecessarily with documentation requirements and bureaucratic drudgery.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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I don’t think the EU can last for much longer either. They will need to blame someone else and start a war.
Falling by their own financial gimmicks.
Reminds me of our Presidents and Congresses these past forty years.
The German national government debt to GDP ratio is about 63%.
The U.S. federal government debt to GDP ratio is about 120%.
All collectivist polities go this route. NYC will get there sooner since they have fewer producers to steal from. EU can break up, the productive ones will leave.
The UK, France, and Germany are all failing.
Eastern Europe is doing far better.
“Eastern Europe is doing far better.”
Eastern Europe has the benefit, or misfortune, of experiencing the failures of a command economy first hand. It seems they aren’t keen to do it again.
What we are witnessing before our eyes in Germany is transformation of the German population via mass, unfettered 3rd world migration:
"The ongoing Third World invasion of Germany will create a nonwhite majority in the 20- to 30-year-old age group within just four years, and a nonwhite majority within one generation, a new statistical analysis based on official German census figures has shown.
'Of the 23 million people in this country who are between 20 and 35 years, approximately 11.5 million people will have a migration background within five years,' Professor Kovács says. Furthermore, the higher birth rate of immigrants “has not even been factored in,”
https://vdare.com/posts/why-is-merkel-turning-germany-majority-non-white-in-a-generation
After that, Germany will be a 3rd world country with a 3rd world economy...
They shut down their nuclear reactors resulting in high electrical rates. The chemical companies there shipped their production to China. What could go wrong??
1. Gaia Worship. You simply cannot have a modern industrial economy based on wind and solar energy. Imported natural gas is way too expensive. Germany could rely on coal and nuclear both of which would be perfectly viable and affordable but the widespread support for Gaia Worship makes that politically impossible.
2. Socialism/Mass immigration. Since Muslim and Africans Rapefugees are worthless and have no job skills, they live on the public dole. Thus making the already unaffordable welfare state even worse. Pensioners were already set to grow as a percentage of the population and they were already not going to be able to keep their pension promises. Then Merkel opened the floodgates to millions of Muslims and Africans starting in 2015.
3. Demographics. As mentioned before, Germany's birth rate has been low for a long time. They were keenly aware of this and talked about it a lot in the early to mid 90s when I was an exchange student there. Had they had kids then, those kids would be prime age workers now. They didn't have those kids and thus there were never going to be anywhere near enough workers to pay for the socialist welfare/pension/healthcare programs they already had. Germany's pitiful economic performance in recent years already attest to their demographic problem.
The German industrial sector collapse has occurred for very same reasons it has occurred in the United States: regulatory strangulation, especially environmental regulations, combined with globalist "free trade" which moved German industrial investment out of Germany to cheaper EU states and China.
The Germans were able to keep or grow their industrial output temporarily by exporting production (particularly automobiles and specialized machinery) that exceeded domestic demand first to other EU states and also to the US and China. China has now copied and improved what the Germans were selling, an inevitable and well foreseeable outcome and the US has imposed tariffs to rectify the trade imbalance. China is also now flooding parts of Europe with autos priced at or below the costs of production to seize market share, a well known East Asian mercantilist strategy.
I found this line particularly funny:
"Friedrich Merz is by no means a man of the lean state."
Almost no German is a "a man of the lean state." Remember Hegel considered the Prussian police state to be the apogee of all historical development and the finest production of the human spirit.
The digs at German rearmament are also silly. The Germans have been free-riding on US NATO commitments for decades, and four years after the start of Russia's second invasion of Ukraine just shows how slow they are to realize that the situation has changed.
Germany was having trouble...what a sad, sad story....
Its true that the US has a worse national debt. But the US actually has a growing economy and MUCH healthier demographics. The Gaia Worshipers also were never able to sabotage the US economy nearly as badly as they did the German economy. As a result the US is a net energy exporter and energy costs about 1/4 of what it does in Germany. This is a huge competitive advantage which will see a lot of manufacturing shift to the US.
Start building panzers again.
“The Gaia Worshipers also were never able to sabotage the US economy nearly as badly as they did the German economy. As a result the US is a net energy exporter and energy costs about 1/4 of what it does in Germany. “
We are a big energy exporter because we have the natural resources for it. Germany does not, whether or not they run a more competitive economy. If we did not have the energy natural resources we have “drill baby drill” would be a hollow cry.
There are many ways we have natural blessings other nations do not.
Example: Japan has built more domestic industrial enterprises than we have in the last 30 years. But Japan has to import nearly all its fossil fuel resources. For the previous 26 years Japan produced more steel than the U.S. in spite of Japan needing to import nearly all the natural resources for it, including coal for industrial energy. You can see South Korea, also not blessed as well as we are with lots of natural resources, yet an industrial powerhouse in spite of needing to import so many resources.
For fifty years we have squandered our natural advantages.
From my experience in Europe this is how it really works:
a) little or incomplete information is available online, and only few forms/permits, etc., can be submitted online;
b) so you must go in person to find out what documents you need. You will have to wait in line at the reduced hours bureaucrats are available to speak to serfs.
c) you get together all the documents you think you need and go back to apply for the registration or permit, etc., only to be told you're still missing something due to a peculiarity of your situation, a document is too old and you must get a new one or the form you used has been replaced by a new one, etc., etc.
d) you finally get everything together and go back and they find the paperwork acceptable. But you don't get the registration or permit, etc., right away. They usually have 30 - 90 days to consider it.
e) They send any correspondence by registered mail, not email or a phone call. If there's any deficiency, you get to start the whole process all over again.
f) in many cases you must go back in person to sign for and pick up the documents.
Every official document gets a seal or stamp (or several), just like it was the 1920s.
Germany still has plenty of coal which fueled all their power plants until they built some nuclear power plants. Those are both viable and under their control ie they wouldn't have to import expensive fuel. Do they use either of those two sources? Of course not! That would actually make sense! Yes the US has more oil, gas, coal, etc but the Gaia Worshipers were not able to sabotage us nearly as much. There was much more resistance from average Americans than there was from Germans who largely bought into all that crap.
Example: Japan has built more domestic industrial enterprises than we have in the last 30 years. But Japan has to import nearly all its fossil fuel resources.
True but before Fukushima, they were getting a helluva lot of their electricity from nuclear power plants. They've started firing those up again as Natural Gas has gotten way more expensive.
For the previous 26 years Japan produced more steel than the U.S. in spite of Japan needing to import nearly all the natural resources for it, including coal for industrial energy. You can see South Korea, also not blessed as well as we are with lots of natural resources, yet an industrial powerhouse in spite of needing to import so many resources. For fifty years we have squandered our natural advantages.
True but that was due much more to trade giveaways rather than Gaia worship. Now that we've started slapping tariffs on others, our steel production is recovering rapidly.
That’s what governments do, then they can’t figure out why everything collapses.
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