The status of Germany as a privileged business country we enjoyed over the last 50 years is dwindling. However, I think that is not solely due to us. We in Germany are still just as adept, creative, and full of ideas, competent, industrious and competent as we have been before.
The general structure has changed. Our economical power is on a world-wide decline. To be sure, the prosperity we achieved during the years of the economic miracle and the high standard of living we have grown used to did not happen exclusively because of our industriousness. We also benefited from cheap raw material and labour from abroad. And we also enjoyed a super reputation through the D-mark being a stable currency.
Consequently, we grew powerful and benefited from the weakness of others. To be sure, it would be over the top to call it exploitation, but we certainly had extremely good margins when exporting and were able to buy raw material, food and much more at very cheap prices.
This phase is now nearing its end. We are undergoing a structural change we can do little about. That is something we should accept.
There is a proverb: “If you cannot stop a movement, put yourself at its head”. Well, this is exactly what we should do. We should channel the inevitable drawback in a useful way. And in the process, we should avoid additional polarisation, separating the poor from the rich, the under-privileged from the privileged.
Unfortunately, we do the opposite. Our politicians – not the people – ignore the inevitable change. They try everything in order to postpone this development. And they try to make up for the structural deficit in prosperity through debts. It started with real-estate inflation and bank gambling and has now reached government level. Next, the “real estate” inflation will concern the commercial properties and then some more countries will be bankrupt.
And in a few years, we, too, will be concerned. But we pretend nothing is amiss and continue at the expense of future generations. The entire talk about financial restructuring and the “law for restricting debts” again turns out to be nothing but political babble by members of a party oligarchy who can no longer be taken seriously.
I still believe that all systems that faced insolvency, no matter if banks, stock, countries or whatever, should have been guided towards a “controlled insolvency”. It should have been “controlled” in order to prevent the gravest damage. If that had happened, we would now have many “Lehmanns”, but we would also be on the way to recovery.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
All the people I personally know who have been affected by the Lehmann bankruptcy were quite wealthy. They all became victims of their optimization strategies and bore their sometimes huge losses with dignity, even if also with aggravation. And none of them drifted into the social offside because of it.
P.S.1
I copied the Euro from the central media archive Wikimedia Commons. It is the old model.
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