Germany’s future

In this article in the New Statesman, Walter Münchau looks at the macro-economics and industrial policy of Germany and predicts its failure and notes the effect of ‘leaving behind’ the old East in particular in its politics with the rise of the AfD. The article is subtitled, “The country is in economic and political crisis…

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Germany and debt fetishism

The stability and growth pact (SGP) is the EU’s public debt management rules and embedded in a separate treaty to the T[F]EU treaties. I have commented on these treaties elsewhere on this wiki. Elsewhere in several articles, on the blog, I criticise the SGP on my blog, including here, here, and here. My main criticism…

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Wuppertal

It has a suspended railway, a zoo and other things to do. It can reached by train, from Koln or Berlin.

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The German Coalition

The German SPD, Greens and FDP have concluded their coalition negotiations and published the coalition agreement. It’s called “Dare to make more progress!” It is available from the SPD on their site and I have also put it up on this site. I have also passed it through google translate, and so we can now…

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On Germany’s election system

The German Federal elections must meet the requirements of Article 38, §1 of the German constitution, “the delegates of the German Parliament (Bundestag) […] are elected in a general, direct, free, equal and secret vote.” This article talks about how Germany does proportionality, overhang seats, inverse success values and their threshold rules. It also looks…

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Economic Migration and Brexit

I was asked if I wanted to work in Germany, and sadly took too long to say, “Yes”. I was wondering what impact Brexit would have on such an opportunity. If the UK, agrees the Govt’s withdrawal agreement, there is a two year transitional agreement, which I think means that “Freedom of Movement” will continue…

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Dr. Fritz Scharpf

I had cause to look at, I have not yet finished the following paper, “The asymmetry of European integration, or why the EU cannot be a ‘social market economy’” or here at Berlin Free University.. written by Dr. Fritz Scharpf, a German Academic who finished his working career as the Director at the Max Planck Institute…

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Berlin

I originally wrote this for me, and used it to record stuff I need to plan and visit the city.  It’s still pretty much the same. It might be useful for others. I first stayed there at the end of the summer 2005. We stayed at the art’otel mitte im Mitte and visited the centre…

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Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main, the home of the German Banking System and now the European Central Bank. It’s taken me a while, since I never visited this city while at Sun (1997-2009) but have been there several times since leaving them. Here are my notes on visiting Frankfurt; here are my pictures on Flikr.

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Mecklenburg-Lower Pomerania

I hope to travel on a holiday along the German Baltic coast sometime. I shall use my trusty ‘Rough Guide to Germany’ as my first and last reference book. Originally written in 2008, and still not done in 2018, but there’s still time, although I have got rid of the Rough Guide as it was…

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