The German Economy Is On The Brink
The economist Herbert Stein once wrote that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. It seems like the German — and with it probably the European — economy is reaching that point. Most of Europe’s 100 largest companies were founded in the 1980s or before, which means that the old continent has entirely slept through the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s. There is no European counterpart to American corporations like Facebook, Amazon, E-Bay or China’s Alibaba or WeChat.
This became painfully clear during the Covid pandemic, when the once vaunted German bureaucracy was revealed to rely on paper, pens and fax machines in its health care system due to a complete lack of digitalisation in key areas. Not surprisingly, the German economy shows cracks elsewhere as well. Measured by market capitalisation, only one German company makes it into the top 100 worldwide, and German market capitalisation as a share of global market capitalisation has shrunk to 1.97%, an all-time low. These are devastating numbers for a country that just a few years back was seen as a model for the world with its transition to Green energy and the planned exodus from nuclear power.
In fact, to add insult to injury, one of the largest German producers of rotator blades for wind turbines has announced it will close down production in Germany and move to India. Similarly, Villeroy & Boch, a company that has produced tiles in the German city of Merzig since 1879 will retire its factory and move manufacturing to Turkey, quoting high energy and labour costs as the main reason. One could argue these are just anecdotes, but it is probably no coincidence that for the first time in 30 years Germany posted a trade deficit of over one billion euros, meaning that Germans are importing more than they are exporting.
More: Germany Is Quietly Shutting Down As Energy Crunch Paralyzes Economy
According to the FT, Germany is now rationing hot water, dimming its street lights and shutting down swimming pools as the impact of its energy crunch begins to spread like the proverbial Ice-Nine wave, from industry to offices, leisure centers and residential homes.
Coming soon to another western country near you.
Anyone notice that Texas – supposed conservative bastion Texas – is facing electrical grid problems because they’ve got too many windmills doing absolutely nothing during a high pressure heat wave?
I try to tell myself that humanity survived 17th century levels of technology in the past. Even more primitive than that. We’re still here, after all. But there will be a difference between that being the level of tech on the way UP, versus going back DOWN to that level and never being able to come back.
The Amish will be fine, at least. Dunno about the rest of us.
My brother and his family are moving to Texas this summer. He bought and is having an automated, whole home backup generator installed because of the state’s electricity issues. Not cheap ($6000 US) but worth it for peace of mind.
Nice state but even there the politicians have lost the plot in regards to sane energy and electricity policy.
Ours, with the deposit put down in January, will be delivered in another 8 to 28 weeks.
Leather boots on the way up, silk slippers on the way down.
Who would have ever figured … the Amish rightfully rejected “the English” modernity. Like the communist Chinese … they take the LONG view. And there’s NEVER inflation … or debt default … when everything you do is “plain”.
It took about 20 years for German politicians to wreck their energy industry. Without affordable, reliable energy the economy was inevitably going to be wrecked. That is what we’re seeing now. Germany is a real life experiment on the effect of green energy policies. Energiewende is a complete and utter failure…the Hindenburg of world energy policies.
Energiewende is a template of what *not* to do. Just look at everything that German politicians did from conception to implementation of Energiewende and then do the exact opposite.
I wonder what the ESG score is for starving your people of food and energy? Politicians worldwide have failed in their primary purpose. It’s past time to replace them with people who actually want to improve their citizens lives instead of please international megalomaniacs.
I wonder what the ESG score is for starving your people of food and energy?
Answer: 100 out of 100. It’s the entire GOAL of the “greens” to cull the herd. Esp. the “old” Boomers who weren’t properly educated about “saving the planet” by their middle school “science” teachers.
They better hurry up recomming their coal and nuclear plants.
Germans are slaves to schedules and procedures. They are unable to colour outside the lines. Their careers are set from early school age. They are not flexible, adaptable, creative or innovative.
There is no 6uild 6ack 6eter
They want a total societal collapse….
They are hoping that we don’t figure it out and take them all down….
Before they take us all down…
Everything that happened was one hundred predictable.
LoL. I like that! Applies to every circumstance in the universe doesn’t it!
Aren’t these the same people who allowed their Green Party to force shutdowns of nuclear power plants?
No sympathy here, sorry.
When your culture chooses green theocracy over reason, economic collapse, and civil strife can’t be far behind. There should always be separation of Hocus Pokus and the state. Germans believe in both in a big way. Perhaps Greta can solve their problems or at least hasten their being put out of their misery.
What is it with this schadenfreud stuff? Do you actually like seeing people suffer? Do you think Germans deserve what is being done to them? As if Canadians are any better. They were serving bugs to people to eat at the Calagary stampede, FFS!
Maybe you should save some shandefreud for yourselves.
One cannot save an addict from their addiction until they hit rock bottom, recognize their errors, and genuinely seek help. Until that point, there’s little an outsider can do to stop the addict from destroying themselves, other than distance themselves so they do not suffer from the addict’s self destruction.
The soon to be fate of Germany is not dissimilar. The Germans have refused to recognize that the course they were setting would end this way. They ignored direct warnings. They refused opportunities to course correct. They were utterly convinced they were correct. They are the addicts that are about to hit rock bottom. Perhaps, after they crash, they will truly and at last see the error of their ways and genuinely seek help. Perhaps they will lash out. Perhaps they will die. The outcome is unknown beyond the fact that a crash is coming.
And no, I do not spare Canadians, or Americans, or Brits, or any number of equally stupid, unserious countries, my disdain. Our turns will no doubt come.
and its not even winter yet. Just wait, we may see suffering in the Fatherland, not seen since the mid to late 40s.
The stupidity of the German “elites” is stupefying
Agreed. Trump told German officials, to their faces, on more than one occasion, that they were being incredibly stupid becoming so reliant on Russian gas. They laughed at him. Stupid Trump, what does he know. That kind of reaction. And by the time Trump was saying these things to the Germans, they were already in a deeply dependent position, but might still have had time to save themselves. Now time is up. Winter is, as you say, coming, and a lot of Germans are in for a very cold struggle.
Germans are getting what’s coming to them. Good & hard.
Within an acknowledgment that Canadians are now among the stupidest people on the planet, during my working career, the Germans I encountered were among the most arrogant people, perhaps even worse than the Dutch and British and I therefore find it difficult to have any empathy for the consequences of their conscious actions in subjugating their energy to their faith in climate hysteria and delusional statist solutions.
Great comment.
It’s also applicable to the jabs.
We’re even worse. We’ll have them as an example and do exactly the same thing anyway.
“The Germans have refused to recognize that the course they were setting would end this way. They ignored direct warnings. They refused opportunities to course correct. They were utterly convinced they were correct. ”
And they actually treated the Green Party seriously, instead of as the single-issue joke that they are.
The Natural Law Party has about the same credibility (at least their ‘yogic flyers’ are somewhat entertaining).
Eating bugs at the Stampede is voluntary.
Optional.
How’d having that commie loving Stasi Merkel work out for the krauts?
Be that as it may Germans will always have that razor sharp wit and ever present sparkling sense of humour to fall back on.
Oh wait, that’s illegal. My bad.
Fire up the Schaufelradbagger you idiots.
Germany has no monopoly on being an unserious nation. Check Christopher Chantrill’s piece in today’s American Thinker.
Every leftist I know (virtually EVERYONE here in the SF Bay Area) literally orgasmed at the the creation of the EU. Ohhhhhhh mommmaaaaaaa! they wailed … finally … Socialism done right! Look! They said, the Euro is stronger than the dollar. And look at all the “green” and “social Justice” programs they are imposing! Ohhhhh mommaaaaaa … and the Muslims … they’re opening their doors to the Muslims displaced by The Bushie’s ME wars! Look what happens when all these nations agree to collectivism!
Soon … it became starkly evident that the EU was made up of the Takers and the Makers (nations). Germany and France essentially FUNDED all the other debtor nations. Greece was a basket case, as were Spain, Portugal, Italy … as a result, Germany called the shots in Brussels.
What do you think will happen to the EU … now that Germany has gone BROKE … and gone EAST for cheap labor and expensive energy? How much longer can the EU survive their WEF/Green … *ahem* … “transition” to a hardcore Fascist/Communist GREEN State? Until all the ollllld Boomers are dead? Until the entire continent is covered in wind factories and solar panels (all made in Communist China)?
The only fate the EU will see is the same as the old USSR and its Warsaw Pact vassals. Expect lame attempts at reforming the unreformable (Gorbachev), bombastic statements in the face of collapse (Honecker) or outright violence and repression (Ceausescu and Jarelzuski) as they flail.
Green energy is failing just as fast as we “conspiracy-theorist/white-supremacist/knuckle-dragging/right-wingers” predicted it would.
I think that Herb Stein never said stop.
He said if it can’t go on forever, it won’t.
More elegant.