Tag Archives: germany

Bad To The Bone – EU Debt Crisis Reaches The Core

24 Nov

barnabyisright.com 3 weeks ago, on November 3rd ( “Gillard Offers Borrowed Money To Bail Out Europe” ):

Let us be perfectly clear, dear reader.

Europe is stuffed. Totally and utterly stuffed.

As is the USA. The UK. Indeed, as is the entire Western world’s financial system.

You simply can not fix a debt problem, by borrowing more money.

Reuters today:

“Disastrous” bond sale shakes confidence in Germany

A “disastrous” German bond sale on Wednesday sparked fears that Europe’s debt crisis was starting to threaten even Berlin, with the leaders of the euro zone’s two biggest economies still at odds over a longer-term structural solution.

With contagion spreading, a majority of 20 prominent economists polled by Reuters predicted that the euro zone was unlikely to survive the crisis in its current form, with some envisaging a “core” group that would exclude Greece.

Investors were also unnerved by reports that Belgium is leaning on France to pay more into emergency support for failed lender Dexia under a 90-billion-euro ($120-billion) rescue deal that had appeared done and dusted.

A special report by Fitch Ratings suggested France had limited room left to absorb shocks to its finances, such as a new downturn in growth or support for banks, without endangering its triple-A credit status.

“The debt crisis is burrowing ever deeper, like a worm, and is now reaching Germany,” one of the more eurosceptic backbenchers in Angela Merkel’s center-right government, Frank Schaeffler of the junior coalition partner Free Democrats (FDP), told Reuters.

Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti were to meet in the French city of Strasbourg on Thursday.

They were expected to discuss the reforms planned by former EU commissioner Monti at a meeting they hope will allow Italy to put behind it the era of scandal-plagued former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned this month.

Underlining how deep the euro zone crisis has become, the German debt agency could not find buyers for almost half a bond sale of 6 billion euros. That pushed the cost of borrowing over 10 years for the bloc’s paymaster above those for the United States for the first time since October.

“It is a complete and utter disaster,” said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities in London.

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Germany Dumps Nuclear For Coal

1 Jun

Here’s a fascinating mix of headlines for you:

Germany ‘Sliding Head Over Heels Into Eco-Dictatorship’

Germany to be the first major industrialised power to shut down all its nuclear power plants

and

Despite Climate Concerns, Germany Plans Coal Power Plants

Coal?

Say what?!

Here in Australia we have our own Greens party advocating (as quietly as possible) a total phasing out of all our coal-fired power generation, and all our coal exports.

At the very same time in Germany, by contrast, we have a move to phase out CO2 emissions-free nuclear power … and replace it with 20+ new coal-fired power stations.

Even though Germany’s Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change (WBGU) have said that both nuclear and coal must be phased out:

In April 2011, the WBGU presented a report entitled “World in Transition – Social Contract for a Great Transformation”. The main theses of the WBGU are as follows: The current economic model (“fossil industrial metabolism”) is normatively untenable…

The reorganization of the world economy has to happen quickly; nuclear energy and coal have to be given up at the same time and very soon.

Confused?

Take heart, my friend.

What you see is merely typical of the individual and collective irrationality, illogic, and cognitive dissonance, that are all too frequently on open display by members of the “climate change” cargo cult.

Consider just one example.  Our local High Priest and false prophet/profit of climate change alarmism, Tim Flannery.

He is a known Gaia-worshipper, who has never been able to answer the simple question, “What’s So Gay About Gaia?”

The real danger, of course, is not global warming.

It is the same danger that mankind has always faced when confronted with highly motivated, rhetorically-skilled preachers of irrationality, illogic, and cognitive dissonance.

That danger is this.  History clearly shows us that these traits are typical of all wanna-be Totalitarians:

Germany’s green government advisors admit frankly that decarbonization can only be achieved by the limitation of democracy – both nationally and internationally…

To carry out this utopian new vision, democratic institutions, the freedom of lifestyles and the right to material well-being is to be sacrificed.

The Germans should know better than most what it really means for a nation or society to “sacrifice” itself to a utopian vision preached ever so loudly by irrational, illogical fanatics.

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