» [Synthèse finale] L’Allemagne tient le continent européen – Interview d’Emmanuel Todd. Or. US. Strange. Euro. Dans l'ombre. L'Allemagne songe à plafonner le salaire des dirigeants d'entreprises. Fondation Bertelsmann. George Soros: Germany should quit euro if they won't do more. BILLIONAIRE speculator George Soros has urged Germany to consider quitting the euro, saying the single currency's prospects would be better with its most dominant member gone.
In what The Guardian calls "an incendiary speech" Soros said Germany should either reverse its opposition to eurobonds, a form of sovereign debt that would allow each member country's borrowings to be guaranteed by the whole eurozone, or leave the currency altogether. See The Business for The Week's daily news round-up The investor, dubbed “the man who broke the Bank of England" after he made $1 billion betting against the pound in 1992, said currently Germany was only willing to do “the minimum” to help save the euro. He added: “The financial problem is that Germany is imposing the wrong policies on the eurozone. Austerity doesn't work.” In the speech, titled How to save the European Union from the euro crisis, the 82-year-old went on to claim Germany was heading for a recession.
Is Germany too powerful for Europe? In his novel Fatherland, Robert Harris envisaged a hellish scenario – Hitler won the second world war.
Decades later, the Greater German Reich extends from the Rhine to the Caspian Sea. The rest of Europe, though notionally consisting of independent states, is really under the Nazi jackboot. Sound familiar? Of course not. That nightmare never came to pass. "The new German power in Europe is not based as in former times on force," writes Beck in German Europe. His homeland's latest iron chancellor Angela Merkel rules Europe, imposing German values on feebler client nations, bailing out southern Europeans with their oversized public sectors, rampant tax evasion and long lunches. Other Germans, naturally, don't see it quite that way. To get a different perspective on German domination of Europe, I consult a standup comic: Henning Wehn, a German comedian who is tired of being called an oxymoron by Britons, and is in the middle of a UK tour.
Cultural export … German comedian Henning Wehn. Les chômeurs allemands plus exposés à la pauvreté que leurs voisins. Dans un rapport publié par la Conférence nationale de la pauvreté, des témoignages de chômeurs donnent une image peu flatteuse de la réussite économique allemande.
Le Monde.fr | • Mis à jour le | Par Johanna Ritter "Lorsque mon fils a eu besoin de lunettes, j'ai dû faire des économies de bouts de chandelles pour les lui acheter. En un an et demi, sa pointure est passée du 34 au 43, ce qui a fortement contribué à grever les finances du foyer. (…) A cette époque, il ne mangeait pas à sa faim. " Extrait du rapport publié à la mi-octobre par la Conférence nationale de la pauvreté (Nationale Armutskonferenz, NAK) un groupement d'associations allemandes, ce témoignage anonyme d'une femme de 45 ans donne un visage inattendu à l'image flatteuse de la réussite économique allemande. >> Lire : Le rapport (PDF, en allemand) Angela Merkel remains a mystery after all these years at the top. It was, Angela Merkel reflects, the most galling mistake of her childhood.
Not a lie or a betrayal, some malicious gossip or a fistfight but the moment in which the young girl from East Germany crawled into the resinous hollow of a tree wearing a new tracksuit sent to her from the West. The anecdote speaks volumes about a dutiful, conscientious, slightly awkward woman who, though pre-eminent in Germany for seven years, is still a relative enigma to her compatriots. It was a response to an array of questions put to her by Süddeutsche magazine as part of a broader inquiry: "Who is this person who is governing our country? " The answer: a woman who regrets not being able to go shopping without being recognised; who would most like to have supper with Vicente del Bosque, the manager of the Spanish football team; who powers down through hiking, cooking or laughing and whose biggest fear is, no, not the collapse of the euro, but getting caught unprotected in a thunderstorm.
Finance. Grâce à la crise.