10:18 – Busy today, particularly for late September. We’ve shipped seven kits so far this morning. I’d better cut this short and get to building more to top up inventory.
Monday, 23 September 2013
11 Comments and discussion on "Monday, 23 September 2013"
Comments are closed.
Merkel cleaned house in the German elections. My friends and family dropped their objections when she started taking a softer tone about the bailouts. Germans, of all of them, love the Euro and love the EU. In spite of the MSM’s focus on those who love the Deutschmark, the movers and shakers realize that if the Deutschmark were resurrected, it would soar in value and kill the German export economy, which has been greatly aided by the Euro holding German product values down.
Coming up in this Merkel term is renegotiation of the UK’s membership in the EU. Looks like Germany’s view will be that the UK must either get in fully or get out.
Germany is in deep, deep trouble on so many levels. See Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s recent column blog about it. Germany is headed for a demographic cliff. It’s running out of young people. That’s critical even now, and in ten years it’s going to be catastrophic. Its university system is pathetic. The top-ranking German university wouldn’t make it even into the top 20 in the US. US employers don’t consider a Ph.D. from a German university, particularly in STEM, as being even the equivalent of a masters from a top 500 US university. In the US and elsewhere, those who hold Ph.D.’s from German universities are considered qualified to be lab technicians.
Meanwhile, Germany’s export market is shrinking fast, particularly now that China is in deep, deep trouble and has cut way back on purchases of German products.
I hope Merkel and Germans enjoy it while they can, because in five years they’re likely to again be the “sick man of Europe” and in 10 years they’ll be in worse shape than the periphery currently is.
The Germans just cut their own throats; five to ten years, tops. Stupid. The UK is rolling right along behind their cousins, and over the cliff.
And in twenty years the North American continent is likely to look a lot different on the maps.
48 here at noon and overcast.
As my dad always said, “Don’t ever bet against the Germans.”
So far, the EU is still standing, in spite of the dire predictions here that they should have broken up a couple years ago.
Yeah, right. They’ve managed to put off the collapse of the euro, but at what cost? Right now, we’re seeing the least of it, with unemployment in the periphery at levels far higher than during the Great Depression. But the birds haven’t yet come home to roost, and the EU has run out of options. With no more band-aids, the next shock is going to tip them over the edge. Boy, are German taxpayers going to be pissed when they find out Merkel has left them holding a trillion-euro bag.
Meanwhile, Germany’s export market is shrinking fast, particularly now that China is in deep, deep trouble and has cut way back on purchases of German products.
For a long time, the number one export item out of Germany to China was old refineries and steel mills. Now that China has stolen XXXXXX bought and moved all those old plants to China, the German exports to China are way down.
It’s called kicking the can down the road; our regime is expert at it. Longer that goes on, the worse the pain at the end, only not for the criminal bastard scum doing the can-kicking. I predict a so-called “far-right” backlash in Europe and eventually here. A lot of people are getting increasingly angry and are arming themselves, with many saying the time for shooting has come already. Before we end up like those piles of shoes outside Dachau and Buchenwald.
Hey OFD, raising the debt ceiling limit does not mean that one is raising the debt (or kicking the can down the road)!
http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/craig-bannister/obama-raising-debt-ceilingdoes-not-increase-our-debt-though-it-has-over
Just read in my latest Guns and Ammo mag that “guns have gone mainstream” and that the ammo manufacturers shipped 12 billion rounds in 2012. They expect to ship 14 to 15 billion rounds in 2013 along with a record number of new guns.
And Nancy Pelosi says that no more cuts can be made:
http://redalertpolitics.com/2013/09/22/nancy-pelosi-on-spending-no-more-cuts-to-make/
Speaking of guns, I made the first stop in my research tour of northern Vermont shops for a look at the ammo situation; today’s visit revealed that there was plenty of handgun ammo; .38, .357, 9mm, .40, .44, .45, and .454 Casull. Shitloads of shotgun ammo. Not much in the rifle department that I could see other than esoteric stuff. Nice selection of Ruger American bolt rifles in various calibers and Leupold scopes. I picked up a couple of things and proprietor and I had a few chuckles over the “gun control” imbeciles. Local accents up here can get really thick; I discovered that it’s a mix of old farmer Quebecois layered on top of Vermonter. Or vice-versa. My eastern MA/RI border twang sticks out.
I am content to patiently sit back and watch Germany. What is more, I am confident they will manage pick up losses to China elsewhere. As far as austerity goes, the Germans are capable of more of that than anybody else, and have not even begun to pull in the stops.
I dunno about Germany. I have a lot of respect for the country and the people, but they have built up a huge socialist welfare state, and cutting back on anything will meet with massive resistance: both from the people no longer getting the bennies, and from the bureaucrats whose job it is to provide them.
When I worked in Germany 15 years ago, my take home pay was less than half of my official pay. Taxes have gone up since. Your take home pay is then further reduced by the 19% VAT, not to mention local taxes, property taxes, etc, etc.. But the Germans don’t see that reducing services would leave them with more money in their pockets; they just see the services they would lose.
A topic on the news lately has been how austerity in recent years has left the West German infrastructure in a terrible state, and they must increase taxes and spending to compensate. It’s even true in some areas: too many people unemployed, which means low tax revenues, which means the areas have lousy infrastructure, which makes them unattractive for business, which means that too many people are unemployed…
Whaddaya do? Like Detroit, the right answer is probably to let nature take it’s course, but that’s a very painful answer on the level of individual lives.