1. #1
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    Lets see, Germany kept its exports cheap by keeping domestic demand down artificially. Meaning they could out compete surrounding European nations who had to resort to high borrowing to keep their economies artificially afloat.

    In return Germany is going to hand them loans to in-debt them to the fatherland and keep them buying their goods. Whilst complaining publicly about the rest of Europe's spending habits.

    Am I missing anything here? Or has Germany screwed up Europe's future for the next few decades a third time?



    Here's an idea. We band together with the Spanish, Greeks, Poles, Italians and French....bust out our tanks and go about partitioning German resources and industry again.
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  2. #2
    And to think that the industrial revolution began in Britain.


    WTF happened?!


    At least be thankful that your country still uses this: £


    Instead of this: €


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  3. #3
    K_Freddie's Avatar Senior Member
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    A generalisation...
    The rest of E have only themsleves to blame..
    - Bad economic policies
    - Corruption
    - Bad work ethics
    - Starting expensive wars with far away lands
    - etc...
    - China is also 'eating up' the US

    Nope... Germany has made sensible decisions with regard to all of the above - The 4th Reich has arrived
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  4. #4
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally posted by K_Freddie:
    A generalisation...
    The rest of E have only themsleves to blame..
    - Bad economic policies
    - Corruption
    - Bad work ethics
    - Starting expensive wars with far away lands
    - etc...
    - China is also 'eating up' the US

    Nope... Germany has made sensible decisions with regard to all of the above - The 4th Reich has arrived
    Well Germany's biggest buyers are China and the EU. If neither of these can buy their good I'd rather be British than German. At the end of the day Germany is equally to blame for making it's own economy dependent on and getting rich off countries like Greece.
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  5. #5
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    "Commenting on those - like the British - who objected to euro membership by saying the currency could not work without a state, Mr Delors said: "They had a point."

    There's a nice "F*** you" to all the EU member states that don't like the UK.

    Do Europeans seriously think that Scotland and Ireland let alone England will like being part of a European superstate with a large democratic deficit?
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  6. #6
    At the end of the day Germany is equally to blame for making it's own economy dependent on and getting rich off countries like Greece.
    How is it Germany's fault that those countries are unable to sustain a favourable industrial-culture?

    Do Europeans seriously think that Scotland and Ireland let alone England will like being part of a European superstate with a large democratic deficit?
    We couldn't actually care less for another run-down country to join the zone.
    You know, the country that vetoed against tighter bank-control laws
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  7. #7
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    So your saying it was okay for Germany to quasi-legally hold German wages down whilst the rest of Europe played by the book? Meaning that Germany gained an advantage basically through cheating? It's then okay that Angie has the audacity to lecture all the other Euro countries?
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  8. #8
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    "The reigning narrative of Europe’s financial turmoil is that profligate European states, agglomerated all too offensively by a swine-referenced acronym, are forcing the continent’s wealthy, prudent northern countries to come to their rescue. Not so, according to two policy experts who spoke this week at a conference on the euro zone crisis at the University of Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

    They argue that labor reforms in Germany prevented the wages of manufacturing workers from rising after monetary union had been completed, making the country more competitive at the expense of its southern peers. Joerg Bibow, a professor of economics at Skidmore College, gives his view of events:

    Germany’s wage trends have been the most important cause of the euro zone crisis. Those wage trends created an asymmetric shock that destabilized Europe.

    This hollowing out of the rest of Europe at the expense of Germany’s workers and to the benefit of its prospering corporate sector only lasted so long because of the insatiable, debt-fueled demand of the American consumer, Bibow said.

    Some market analysts have argued that the euro itself is a backdoor stimulus for Germany, because monetary union has kept the common currency much lower than the deutschmark would be if Germany’s trade surpluses had been accumulated outside the EMU.

    Heiner Flassbeck, a former German government official who is currently a director at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, says the economic leg up goes a step further. The way he sees it, monetary union is effectively a commitment by various nations to having the same inflation rate over time. Yet while inflation in other European nations converged toward the European Central Bank’s 2 percent target, Germany’s dipped even further – in great part because wages were not allowed to rise in line with business productivity.

    One country got it absolutely wrong. That country was not Greece, it was Germany. Due to German wage-cutting, Germany adopted a beggar-thy-neighbor export model."

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  9. #9
    The Euro was not Germany's idea.
    It actually was Monsieur Mitterand, who wanted a commitment to a pan-european currency by Germany as condition to his agreement to Germany's re-unification.

    So much for the world-domination myth.


    This hollowing out of the rest of Europe at the expense of Germany’s workers and to the benefit of its prospering corporate sector only lasted so long because of the insatiable, debt-fueled demand of the American consumer, Bibow said.
    So Germany's workers should pay for the economic mistakes of others?
    Nice try
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  10. #10
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally posted by Bremspropeller:
    The Euro was not Germany's idea.
    It actually was Monsieur Mitterand, who wanted a commitment to a pan-european currency by Germany as condition to his agreement to Germany's re-unification.

    So much for the world-domination myth.


    <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> This hollowing out of the rest of Europe at the expense of Germany’s workers and to the benefit of its prospering corporate sector only lasted so long because of the insatiable, debt-fueled demand of the American consumer, Bibow said.
    So Germany's workers should pay for the economic mistakes of others?
    Nice try </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

    EDIT: Just rude.

    Otherwise your economy is going to hit the fan. Either your country accepts Europe is in it together and play by the rules instead of using it to serve self interest or it should openly oppose it. At least we British aren't two faced on the European issue.
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