Tuesday, February 2nd 2010
Obama is not visiting the EU summit in Madrid this spring. The Europeans are more than disappointed. “It’s your fault”, said the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Obama’s absence will highlight a major problem of the European Union. “Who is in charge?” the Journal asked. The new full-time president Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the EU commission Jose Manuel Baroso or the rotating presidency, a position which is held every six months by a new country? I think the real reason for the withdrawal from the summit is that the American president is in charge of too much already. He has to fight back a deep recession, he has to introduce a new health care bill, he has to fight several wars and last but not least he has to push back the Republican surge. If politicians would talk frankly, the White House would declare: Sorry dear Europeans, but our one and only president has too much on his plate. Bottom line: Maybe the Europe-style three-headed leadership is not that bad?
Monday, February 1st 2010
It seems to me that America has not learned that much from the last financial crisis. We are in this mess because there was too much trust, too much debt, too much spending. And how did the White House respond to the burst bubble? With even more trust, more debt, more spending. The new budget which Barack Obama introduced today is a 3.8 Trillion Dollar spending plan. For this XXL-government budget he needs to borrow 1.3 Trillion Dollar. That means 33 Cents of every single Dollar the government spends will be borrowed. Uncle Sam is still addicted to debt. “How long can the world´s biggest borrower remain the world biggest power?” Obama’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers asked one year ago. This year he has zipped his lips. But he should stand up to his Yes-We-Can-President and say the following: Mr. President, no, we can´t.
Sunday, January 31st 2010
Once only media companies like Der Spiegel bought secret information about bank accounts from German taxpayers in different tax oasis. I remember a cover story we ran in 1996 about “The Lichtenstein Connection” which had a huge impact. We had published a long list of people who had tried to hide their real wealth behind a Lichtenstein numbered account. Our sales went up and the Treasury’s income was on the rise. For example Paul Schockemöhle, the three time European champion in show jumping, immediately paid ten million Deutsche Mark after he heard about our investigation.
Now a new competitor in the hunt for such secret information has appeared: The German government. It’s bad news for the investigative media business, but good news for the taxpayers. It was a smart but risky move of our chancellor Angela Merkel to go and buy a secret list with Swiss account information of Germans who try to cheat their country. She has my blessing: Go government go!
Tuesday, 26.01.2010
In today’s world every skilled worker has to speak English. That’s what Günther Öttinger, the former Governor of Baden Württemberg in the south of Germany once said. Now the newly appointed European Commissioner has to prove his own language abilities. If comedy is the funny way to be serious then politicians are new comedians. Have a look:
Monday, 25.1.2010
Charlotte, North Carolina is a hot spot for the transatlantic community. The city once named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the German wife of King George III is still extremely popular with German business people. Klaus Becker, the president of the German American Chamber of Commerce, keeps things moving here. Together we toured a Siemens plant where we found happy people praising the company’s investment in their facility. Later on I delivered a little speech to the Charlotte business community and we had a thoughtful and open minded discussion about the “Future of the West”. The keyword of our conversation was realism.
Sunday, 24.1.2010
For one year among Democrats it was not allowed to call Barack Obama “naive” and “unexperienced”. The ban has now been broken by James Carville, the architect of the successful presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. In the Financial Times he wrote: The mistake of Obama was with “refreshing naivite” to believe in his own change rhetoric. Nothing can change Washington, says Carville. Bottom line number one: Obama has to play by the rules or he will fail. Bottom line two: If you have friends like Carville, you don´t need enemies.
Wednesday, 20.1.2010
Is there anything new to discover about Nazi Germany? There is! My friend Jeffrey Herf, historian at the University of Maryland and a well known political author, has written an amazing new book. It´s title is “Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World”. Jeff has done intensive research about Hitler’s outreach to the Muslim world. He discovered magazines and radio programs in different Arabic languages designed to mobilize antisemitism sentiment among Muslims. Hitler looked for new allies in his propaganda war – and he found them. Jeff’s book describes another dark side of the darkest chapter of German history.
Obama and Nobel – 12/10/2009 The Wrong Prize at the Wrong Time
US President Barack Obama speaks after receiving the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo City Hall on Thursday.
Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama could turn out to be an historic error. There were many others who deserved it more — first among them a German chancellor. >> read more
Opinion – 04/30/2009 The Most Expensive President Since 1945
The new US president’s first 100 days in office were expensive, glamorous and often contradictory. Barack Obama has done many things right against a host of intractable problems, but he’s made at least two blatant mistakes. >> read more
West Wing – 11/18/2008 The Speech We Should Have Heard at the G-20
At the financial summit in Washington, the international community was unduly respectful of the United States, neglecting to probe more deeply into the reasons for the crisis. Only one attendee was unruly — German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück. Here’s the message he didn’t deliver to Bush. >> read more
The War for Wealth
The True Story Of Globalization, Or Why The Flat World Is Broken
by Gabor Steingart
Published by McGraw Hill Professional, New York
Hardcover, 304 pages
May 2008
