The blog owner's experience and expertise is in finance, banking and consulting. I found them interesting and useful in 2008. Their take on geopolitics is pro Russia and is also not particularly...
The blog owner's experience and expertise is in finance, banking and consulting. I found them interesting and useful in 2008.
Their take on geopolitics is pro Russia and is also not particularly sophisticated.
This is a very mad piece. Firstly, it's not like US (and UK and some eastern European states) didn't extensively warn Germany about the risks of getting hooked on Russian gas, so Germany really...
This is a very mad piece. Firstly, it's not like US (and UK and some eastern European states) didn't extensively warn Germany about the risks of getting hooked on Russian gas, so Germany really only has itself to blame here for the economic fallout.
The stuff around Babercock saying she wants to stand with Ukraine "no matter what my German voters think" is probably an English-language problem. I imagine the intended sentiment was "I still support it, even if it is politically unpopular" rather than "I don't believe in democracy and want to override it". I will also say though that foreign policy decisions made on a purely democractic basis tend to go very badly – voters in democracies tend to be very ill-informed and also believe that what they want can actually happen (whereas in foreign policy countries are very often stuck on a path dependency and voters tend to go for knee-jerk reactions that result in a lot of flip-flopping).
I also think it's really funny that Germany has turned "the US is paying for our defence because the Russians are our mutual enemy" into "the US secretly controls the German government and actually Russia is a great friend for Germany".
If the Germans want to improve the situation, they should give more weapons to the Ukrainians. That's the best (and only sensible) way to end the war.
If you'd like some genuine insight into Germany's problems, they're much like the U.S.'s problems with political capture by a more-or-less secretive billionaire oligarchy. Coincidentally, Adam...
If you'd like some genuine insight into Germany's problems, they're much like the U.S.'s problems with political capture by a more-or-less secretive billionaire oligarchy. Coincidentally, Adam Tooze had a very revealing story in Chartbook here: Crazy Rich Germans... and the hypocrisy of the "social market economy".
These oligarchs are perfectly happy to see wars fought for the preservation of the order which makes their comfort possible, as long as the cost of supporting those wars doesn't discomfort them. [And a number of those fortunes were made and continue to be made from armaments.]
Because the oligarchs are largely invisible, it's easy to foster right-wing populist nationalism with any convenient scapegoats, along the lines of the Russian model. This bullfighter-style misdirection of citizen anger has worked as long as mass-reach media have existed.
Both the breakdown of the Left Party, which is considered a direct descendant of the Socialist Unity Party that ruled East Germany until reunification, and the rise of the AfD are the political signs of an upheaval occurring in Germany caused by the willingness of the country’s elites to impose economic decline on the vast majority of its citizens.
Aside from Ukrainians, the German people are among the biggest losers from the ongoing war against Russia. While support for Project Ukraine slowly evaporates, the damage to the German economy will not end with the war effort. Inflation continues to be problematic, the energy outlook remains dire, the economy is stagnating, exports to China are declining and there is constant pressure from Atlanticists to self-impose a further reduction, living standards are declining, political paralysis reigns on most matters except social cuts and more military spending, and wealth inequality grows.
Glad to see some antibodies to this kind of writing here in these comments. This article isn't even thinly veiled in its militating against the foundations of a liberal order. The fact that it...
Glad to see some antibodies to this kind of writing here in these comments. This article isn't even thinly veiled in its militating against the foundations of a liberal order. The fact that it cannot relate German decision-making in relation to its own choices, and instead exports their agency to the United States in every paragraph indicates to me that this is an article using Germany's economic slump as a stalking horse to throw stones at the United States.
That website is clearly pro-russia and anti-europe/NATO, as evidenced by this article. I don't think I'd consider it a trusted source of information.
The blog owner's experience and expertise is in finance, banking and consulting. I found them interesting and useful in 2008.
Their take on geopolitics is pro Russia and is also not particularly sophisticated.
This is a very mad piece. Firstly, it's not like US (and UK and some eastern European states) didn't extensively warn Germany about the risks of getting hooked on Russian gas, so Germany really only has itself to blame here for the economic fallout.
The stuff around Babercock saying she wants to stand with Ukraine "no matter what my German voters think" is probably an English-language problem. I imagine the intended sentiment was "I still support it, even if it is politically unpopular" rather than "I don't believe in democracy and want to override it". I will also say though that foreign policy decisions made on a purely democractic basis tend to go very badly – voters in democracies tend to be very ill-informed and also believe that what they want can actually happen (whereas in foreign policy countries are very often stuck on a path dependency and voters tend to go for knee-jerk reactions that result in a lot of flip-flopping).
I also think it's really funny that Germany has turned "the US is paying for our defence because the Russians are our mutual enemy" into "the US secretly controls the German government and actually Russia is a great friend for Germany".
If the Germans want to improve the situation, they should give more weapons to the Ukrainians. That's the best (and only sensible) way to end the war.
If you'd like some genuine insight into Germany's problems, they're much like the U.S.'s problems with political capture by a more-or-less secretive billionaire oligarchy. Coincidentally, Adam Tooze had a very revealing story in Chartbook here: Crazy Rich Germans... and the hypocrisy of the "social market economy".
These oligarchs are perfectly happy to see wars fought for the preservation of the order which makes their comfort possible, as long as the cost of supporting those wars doesn't discomfort them. [And a number of those fortunes were made and continue to be made from armaments.]
Because the oligarchs are largely invisible, it's easy to foster right-wing populist nationalism with any convenient scapegoats, along the lines of the Russian model. This bullfighter-style misdirection of citizen anger has worked as long as mass-reach media have existed.
Glad to see some antibodies to this kind of writing here in these comments. This article isn't even thinly veiled in its militating against the foundations of a liberal order. The fact that it cannot relate German decision-making in relation to its own choices, and instead exports their agency to the United States in every paragraph indicates to me that this is an article using Germany's economic slump as a stalking horse to throw stones at the United States.