“SKIING IN THE MOUNTAINS OF HINDUKUSCH”
Speech delivered in Charlotte, North Carolina, at an event of the German American Chamber of Commerce on Monday, January 25th 2009
“Dear Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s a great pleasure to be your guest tonight. Let’s give a big round of applause to Klaus Becker, the chairman of the American-German Chamber of Commerce here in Charlotte. Klaus pushed me hard to speak about „The Role of the West in the World of the Future“. That’s a really great invitation to tell you a lot of smart things which will later on turn out to be completely wrong. That seems to be the destiny of projections. Looking into the future is a tricky business.” >> read more
“I’M DYING”
Speech delivered on Capitol Hill in the speakers series “Woodrow Wilson Center on the Hill” on September 22nd 2009.
“Dear Ladies and Gentlemen. It´s a great honor and pleasure to be your guest on Capitol Hill, a historic place in troubled time. As I know you are all more than busy here on the Hill – you have to pass through big pieces of legislation from health care reform to immigaration- so let’s come straight to point. My topic is the media crisis. The headline of my speech could be: I´m dying.
Don´t get me wrong. For a 47-year old man, I feel healthy. As a father of three kids, I´m more than happy. Living in the US is an amazing experience. But: As an old school print journalist, I´m dying. And the sad truth is: I’m not the only one. In our industry, people are dying like flies, even if a few swine flu victims get a lot more attention. One fifth of the journalistic workforce of 2001 has disappeared over the last couple of years. And it looks like a lot more will follow. We are losing people and profits.” >> read more
“Globalization, Trade Deficits, and the New Working Class”
German journalist Gabor Steingart blames western nations’ trade deficits for the shift of traditional manufacturing jobs to developing countries, a phenomenon he describes as a “second industrial age – blue-collar 2.0.”
London, 12. June 2008
“IT’S TIME FOR CHANGE”
Speech at the London School of Economics, June 2008
“Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m very pleased to be your guest tonight. Before we start our discussion I would like to make a few brief remarks about today’s hotbutton issue, the ongoing process of globalisation. Everybody in the upcoming American election is selling big portions of change. You can buy it enriched with hope – then it comes from a former community organizer. Or it is loaded with experience – then it will be offered by a war veteran. But real change needs more then a politician. For example you and me. It´s time now in the campaign circus to lift the curtain not for an other political strategist, but for a great behavioral scientist, the Nobel laureate Ivan Petrovich Pavlov from St. Petersburg, Russia. By experimenting with dogs he discovered a long time ago the animals have an innate reflex. He placed food in front of them. Like a push of a button – saliva begins to flow. Pavlov combined two stimuli, food and the sound of a bell, until the dogs understood the connection. The bell rang and the dogs started salivating. Then Pavlov shortened the reflex chain by removing the food. But the dogs continued to salivate after the bell tone, even when food no longer followed. We learned an important lesson: that an experience, once stored in memory, becomes stronger than reality. Unfortunately we are not doing better than our dogs. Our political reflexes are very similar. Whether we call ourselves progressives, conservatives or even independents, we have one thing in common – we are often ill-conditioned.” >> read more
“IT’S ABOUT POLITICS, STUPID!”
Opening Remarks at the Book launch in Washington D.C., May 2008
“A warm welcome to Mr. Ambassador Dr. Klaus Scharioth and his wife, dear Senator Birch Bayh, thank you for coming to our house, a big round of applause for Steve Pearlstein from the Washington Post, who just recently won the Pulitzer Prize 2009, dear colleagues and friends: It´s a great honor to have you all here. Thank you Dennis and Marnie for hosting this book party. After 10 days of constant rain you managed to brighten things up a little bit. That’s the change we needed. On the book cover you find only one author, but what you see inside is the work of so many different people. So I have to say thank you for all the great support. Thank you to Henry Kissinger, who helped me to find my way in the American book market.” >> read more
“A TRADE NATO FOR THE WORLD ECONOMY”
Speech and discussion at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Washington D.C., Spring 2007
“Asian businessmen are the friendliest conquerors the world has ever seen. The West should wake up and start defending its values. An ambitious project awaits our generation: a European-American free-trade zone. There are essentially three exclusive characteristics whose simultaneous development has served as the foundations of the United States’ success up until now — and they only appear in this particular combination in America. They are not only the country’s biggest strengths, but also its greatest weaknesses. It is worth scrutinizing them more closely.” >> read more
“A TRADE NATO FOR THE WORLD ECONOMY”
Speech at the Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. Spring 2007
“Thank you kindly for your invitation, Bruce Katz, Vice President of the Brookings Institution. I am very proud to be with you today and it’s an honour to be your guest You have done so much research on the globalisation issue, both theorethically and practically. I admire the work you have done with the urban age project, which you began years ago together with Wolfgang Nowak, the President of the Alfred-Herrhausen-Society. I know you gave a lot of intellectual support to the Clinton-Administration, which worked very well at last. You asked me to speak about my view on the global world and what politicians can do under the conditions of a world market. A lot – even a lot more than governments think. So let’s go straight into the subject. Once upon a time, the great John Maynard Keynes told us: “If the facts change, I change my opinion.” Today I call upon you to rethink globalisation, to change your opinion about international trade and its consequences, because: The facts have changed – and because the facts have to change. I believe there are six popular misconceptions in this great debate. These misconceptions are responsible for a collective misunderstanding of our world today and they are responsible for wrong politics that we follow now. Most voters don’t know anything about this, but they feel that the traditional way of thinking doesn’t work anymore.” >> read more
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