Squaring the Circle

What’s going on in Merkel’s mind is the most interesting aspect of all this. She and Schaeble have both said NEIN to going over Germany’s existing 211 billion euro commitment. Both have consistently refused to accept “eurobonds” Both have said that the idea of a “big bazooka” is “silly” and indeed “stupid”. Various German banking worthies have also said “NO” to the ECB printing money (GOOD FOR THEM) and the German Constitutional Court has said “No more powers to Brussels without a referendum.”

BUT, UNLESS Germany IGNORES all that and (idiotically in my view) puts all her resources into a multi-trillion bailout fund then it seems to me CERTAIN that Greece and Italy will default, if not others.

Yet Merkel and her gang have ALSO said they will prevent the collapse of the euro. I CANNOT see how they are going to square this circle. Can anyone else?

 

Milliband the Fatuous …..

“Back to the UK, finally. Labour leader Ed Miliband has called for an emergency European council summit, with an expectation that the summit should continue until the issue of how to build a credible bailout fund is resolved.“

He really is a hoot. Does he want to lock them all up until they come up with a magic solution?  Or is it once again the “Germany must and will pay.” mantra?

He JUST DOESN’T GET IT. There IS no “CREDIBLE BAILOUT FUND” solution. Even GERMANY has large debt, only mitigated by its business performance, which is going to FALL as the rest of the lunatic over-borrowers collapse. Does he want Germany to collapse, TOO?

WHO IS GOING TO BAIL OUT GERMANY?

We need MORE INTELLIGENT LEADERS ……….

And for God’s sake stop “calling for” things. It DOESN’T WORK AND IS PATHETIC.

 

The Troika

A) The “troika” was supposed to assess whether Greece had fulfilled the terms of its bailout deal, right?

B) Nobody (least of all the troika) REALLY believes Greece has come anywhere near fulfilling these terms, oder?

C) The troika has loaned them 8 billion€ of someone’s money anyway. (presumably not from Christine Lagarde’s salary)

Have I got it right so far?

CONCLUSION: the troika setup was yet another LIE.

I suppose it was dubbed “the troika” because, being Russian, it would naturally be associated with mafiosi crookedness? Very clever. That way it makes it easier to remember what exactly it was.

 

The Germans abandon Nuclear Power ….

Well, everyone goes through their potty cycle, and the Germans are certainly going through theirs at the moment:

A) They gave up the Deutschmark after a promise made by the EU that they’d NEVER have to bail out feckless over-borrowers AND that entry to the euro would ONLY go to those with smaller than 3% of GDP deficit AND that the rules would be strictly obeyed. Pretty stupid to fall for that load of lying tripe, eh? Hardly had the euro got under way when France went over 3% saying that the rule “was only intended for small countries”. Greece of course was never UNDER 3%.

B) They slagged off the Spanish for their infected cucumbers and caused them to lose MILLIONS in revenue when there was NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that the Spanish were at fault. Now we’re told it’s German beansprouts that caused the problem … THANKS ….. I switched from cucumbers to a massive intake of German beansprouts thinking that they must be safe, being (1) German and (2) not cucumbers …… this could therefore be my last post ….. WHO CAN I SUE?

C) They have given up nuclear power ….. this DESPITE the fact that:

1) the last tsunami in Germany was around 90,000 BC and modern nuclear plants are vastly safer than the one that blew up in Japan, where they put the cooling generators BELOW the waterline of a possible tsunami. The Japanese are normally so clever, but nobody’s perfect ……

2) they CANNOT replace nuclear with bleedin’ wind turbines

3) the trillions of new wind turbines they’re going to build don’t WORK half the time because there’s no wind – and getting power from the North Sea down to the car factories in Stuttgart and Munich will mean vast power lines through pristine forest …….

4) the wind turbines they DO install will not be replacing CO2 emitting coal, but CLEAN nuclear fuel

5) they’ll need to import electricity from DIRTY power-stations in Eastern Europe and HA HA FRENCH NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS.

As I said, potty …… Oh, AND their increasingly-clearly-incompetent Chancelleress has agreed to bail out Greece AGAIN, despite the fact that it’s pointless. Greece WILL default eventually – I read today that the Boche are only doing it to put off the time when Greece defaults in the hope that the resulting hit on their own banks won’t be as bad as it would be today.

“I weep for the future.”

 

German Diary

typical summer tyre

Today is a significant day in the year. World Peace Day? World Save the Tiger Day? No – though we will certainly celebrate those when they come around. It’s “Put-the-winter-tyres-on” Day ….. I am shortly going to go down to the garage and swap over the tyres so that I can continue to drive just as fast but stop within the same distance even though the road is icy. Well, that’s the way of many Germans ….

typical winter tyre

Am I doing this out of pure altruism or even selfishness in wanting to avoid accidents? As it happens in my case, yes, but in fact it is also the LAW here. If you have a smash-up in the winter season and you’ve got your summer tyres on, both Mr Germoplod AND your insurer will be at you worse than a rabid rottweiler.“You know it makes sense” of course. But is is certainly a very Germanic custom; they don’t have this in France, though of course the winters in most places there are a bit milder. I say “bit”, but  in parts of Germany the winter can be savage. Here you can see some photos of snow last winter in Freudenstadt (hit F11 for full-screen), where I live – 700m above sea level in the middle of the Black Forest …….. And the coldest place I have ever been in was Hamburg in 1975, when I couldn’t defrost the windscreen for love or money.So winter drawers and tyres on …

PS The differences between winter and summer tyres ….