This article appears in the August 4, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
WAKE UP CALL!
We’re Losing Germany!
We Need a Different Policy!
[Print version of this article]
A translation from the July 27, 2023 issue of the German-language newspaper, Neue Solidarität.
July 22—If Germans were fully aware of what has been happening to Germany for some time, they would be in the streets by the millions, demanding an immediate change in policy. Deindustrialization is in full swing, and with it, not only our prosperity, but also all of our social system—health, education, pensions, etc.—is being demolished.
We face a future with the standard of living of a failed state. We will be fully entangled in a “rules-based” foreign policy designed to perpetuate hostility to Russia and ruin relations with China. In the process, all policies are being streamlined to suit the interests of the U.S. military-industrial complex, which is ruining us economically and threatening an escalation into World War III.
The alarm bells are ringing: The German Economics Institute (Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft, IW) reports that last year, €125 billion more direct investment flowed out of Germany than was invested from abroad, and that these are the “highest net outflows ever recorded in Germany.” Foreign companies only invested €10.5 billion directly here (Tesla’s announced expansion of its facility near Berlin has not yet been taken into account).
The German Chemical Industry Association (Verband der Chemischen Industrie, VCI) expects sales to fall by 14-16% this year. VCI President Markus Steilemann warned: “The house is on fire!”
According to Clemens Fuest, head of the IFO [Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, Munich —ed.], deindustrialization is already in full swing, the key areas of the automotive and chemical industries have long collapsed, production in the automotive industry is now only two-thirds of what it was in 2018, and the trend is downward. The BDI [Federation of German Industry —ed.] reported that 16% of medium-sized companies are already in the process of relocating production abroad, and another 30% are considering doing so.
Looting by United States
The reason for this is that local conditions in Germany have deteriorated dramatically, first and foremost due to the massive increase in energy prices. These are the result of the effects of the primarily U.S.-enforced sanctions against Russia that began well before the Ukraine war. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, for which the American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh blames the Biden Administration, has, under the current circumstances, destroyed the possibility of reducing energy costs again by reopening the pipelines and the associated supply of cheap Russian natural gas. Instead, Germany is now more energy dependent than ever before—only this time upon the United States and U.S.-produced LNG, which is many billions of euros more expensive.
With the Inflation Reduction Act and the associated subsidies for investments in the U.S.A., the Biden Administration is now enticing industries that are struggling in Germany due to high energy prices, to relocate to the United States. In doing so, the principle of “America First” is being followed ruthlessly, so it is of no use to Chancellor Olaf Scholz if he dutifully repeats that we, in the trans-Atlantic alliance, are doing “everything together.”
Another reason why medium-sized companies are fleeing the Federal Republic lies in the bureaucratic flood of European Union and home-made rules and regulations—which are almost exclusively due to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s “Green Deal” and the politics of the Greens—and a massive shortage of skilled workers, which in turn is the result of decades of bad policy. Toralf Haag, head of the large Voith family company founded in 1825, emphasized to the world that he had had to hire 30 new administrative employees in the last two years due to the flood of regulations, and that German industry was not only in danger of “losing its DNA” due to the circumstances, but also any potential for the future.
Ideology-Based Incompetence
In addition to the geostrategic reasons for the deindustrialization of Germany, there is the ideology-based incompetence of “green” economic policy, which is now clearly undermining the productivity of the economy. It is now apparent that all offshore wind farms are uneconomical due to higher inflation and capital costs and will probably no longer be able to be built. Also poorly thought out, was the fact that most of the power lines that were to transport the electricity to the southern federal states are not designed for the huge amounts of wind and solar power, and many generating systems cannot even be connected to the grid.
But there has also been a massive slump in planned building renovations and sales of thermal insulation products and heat pumps. In an open letter to the Federal government on July 19, fifteen industry, consumer, environmental and climate protection associations expressed their alarm at the impending collapse in building renovation rates. The associations wrote:
There is a risk of layoffs in the specialist area. Companies that have built up capacities due to political signals, cannot maintain them if there is no demand.
The situation in construction is even worse than in industry and the energy sector; demand for housing has plummeted despite the catastrophic shortage of affordable housing. This massive decline will only have an even greater impact on construction output once the remaining commissioned orders have been processed.
This list could be extended considerably. All of this will worsen dramatically as central banks are unable to find a way out between the Scylla of inflation triggered by liquidity injection to bail out bankruptcies and energy increases, and the Charybdis of raising interest rates. The neoliberal financial system is hopelessly indebted with quadrillions of outstanding derivative contracts. Conclusion: a massive screw-up, across the board!
Anyone who, in view of this overall situation, counts on the “self-healing powers of the market” and wants to stick to the Federal debt limits, like Free Democratic Party (FDP) boss Christian Lindner, understands just as little about the real situation of the German economy as the children’s book author Robert Habeck—with whom one just does not know exactly whether he is playing with sand molds in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, without knowing what he is doing, or whether he is secretly happy that his “green” policy is having the desired result.
What Represents Germany’s Own Interests?
The all-important question is whether, in view of this existential danger for Germany, there are enough industry representatives, medium-sized companies, works councils or people in general who are willing to break with this self-destructive foreign and economic policy, and to stand up for a policy in the sovereign interest of Germany.
In any case, the political establishment is not doing that, but rather is obviously preparing to entrust its wealth to the machinations of Wall Street and the City of London—no matter what the consequences are for Germany as a place for industry, and thus also for the standard of living of wage-earning people, and no matter whether we risk our physical existence through this total submission to NATO politics.
We need a fundamental change in the direction of a policy that once again represents Germany’s very own interests as an industrial and export nation. To do this, we have to put behind us the entire neoliberal, “green” paradigm, into which we have been maneuvered, step by step, since the early 1970s, along with the false Malthusian dogma from the Club of Rome of alleged “limits to growth.” We must remember our identity as a people of poets, thinkers, and inventors. And we must remember our capacity to increase our efficiency in the universe through scientific discoveries of universal physical principles.
Growth does not mean quantitative increase, as the Greens want us to believe, but the systematic qualitative advancement of mankind, the increasing dominance of the noösphere over the biosphere in the sense of Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, Albert Einstein and Vladimir Vernadsky.
It is also in our sovereign interest to work together with the global majority of humanity, i.e., the nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, who are now in the process of building a new economic system together with the BRICS-plus countries, where the common good of all is the basis of cooperation. This means that we must not allow the policy of so-called “de-risking” from China to be imposed, which in any case is only a semantic obfuscation of decoupling, as part of a confrontation that can only end in World War III.
And rather than self-destructively submitting to NATO’s policy of confrontation, sacrificing the common good of German citizens to the militarization of our economy, Germany must work to restore peace, putting its weight behind the initiatives of Pope Francis, President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s President Lula and the group of African states—all committed to a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war.
In view of the complete dismantling of Germany, which is taking place before our very eyes, it is incomprehensible how paralyzed our society is behaving. Do we really not understand that everything that generations have rebuilt from the rubble since the end of World War II is about to be lost? That everything that Germany has in terms of great culture, classical music and poetry, is in danger of being wiped out by a vile counterculture that is destroying our humanity? If one is afraid of being heard when expressing an opinion that differs from the mainstream media, and prefers to conform because one fears the social consequences, one should realize that the consequences of current politics are even more to be feared.
The emergence of a new world economic order—in which the nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America want finally to overcome the colonialism of the last 600 years—can no longer be stopped, except by a world war. We must ensure that Germany places itself on the right side of history.
