Another column by the brilliant Tarik Cyril Amar. Amar has only one obvious flaw and that is antisemitism. If you can ignore that, should I fail to edit it out, you will certainly learn something.
Something needs to be done to save Germany.
€1 trillion of debt is not it
Germans are famously – infamously, really – fiscally conservative. Believe me, I know: I am German and have witnessed for decades, indeed all my conscious life, how my compatriots have fretted obsessively over public debt.
They often conflate the rules that may work for individual, personal frugality with what is needed by a modern state and its economy. Indeed, they have crystallized their misguided ideal of how to manage public finance with a tight fist and little foresight in the odd avatar of ‘the Swabian Housewife’ (Swabians are stereotypically thrifty and prudent; sort of the Scots of the German sense of self).
And whenever the national adoration of the Swabian Housewife was not enough, plaintive sobs of ‘Weimar, Weimar’ were added. You see, Germany’s first failed experiment at (more or less) democracy, the Weimar Republic of the interwar years, is said to have died, among other things, of inflation.
Hyperinflation, so this shaky but (formerly) extremely powerful tale of a “unique inflation trauma” goes, undermined that state’s legitimacy from the very beginning, so that it could never grow strong enough to later withstand the pressure of the Great Depression and the Nazis.
Curiously enough, in this sorely mistaken version of recent German history, austerity was enshrined as the magic charm that will keep inflation away and therefore also other undesirable things such as Leni Riefenstahl movies, fascism, and starting and losing yet another world war while committing genocide.
In reality, it was, of course, precisely the austerity policy of the last Weimar governments, enacted about as undemocratically as is fashionable again now (see below), that really made the effects of the Great Depression even worse and helped open a path to power for the Nazis.
But this time, everything is different. In a truly unprecedented move – instantly recognized as historic, for better or, much more likely, worse – Germany’s elites, in politics, the media, and academia, have closed ranks Nuremberg-party-rally-style to make Germany splurge again. The upshot is a fundamental policy change, complete with fixing the constitution, another thing Germans usually are obstinately conservative about. And all that to go into massive, quite possibly crippling debt for, in essence, war with Russia.
For, in sum, there are three ways in which Germany wants to go on a big binge: The so-called debt brake – an anachronistic and economically primitive limit on public debt – will be removed for anything having to do with ‘defense’, that is, in reality a massive rearmament program, including civil defense and the intelligence services, as well as for military assistance to Ukraine.
Second, the German government will also incur debt to the tune of another €500 billion to be spent over 12 years. This money is supposed to be invested in climate action (a sob to Germany’s militaristic, far-right Greens) and infrastructure.
Infrastructure, here, has much to do with military purposes as well. No secret has been made out of the fact that often decrepit German railways, roads, and bridges, for instance, are to be renovated not merely for civilian and commercial purposes. Instead, as before in German history, trains and autobahn highways, for instance, are being highlighted as key parts of military logistics.
And as before as well, the big propaganda story is that they are needed for sending military forces into a fight against Russia. Only that this time, Germany is presented as a hub for all of NATO. Whatever ‘all of NATO’ may mean in the future.
Third – and usually overlooked – as Germany is a federation, its individual land states are also being empowered to assume additional debt. The way all of this is supposed to work together over the next decade or so, is complex. For instance, there are complicated and probably impractical rules designed to avoid labeling ordinary budget expenses and debt-making as part of this program. Yet the upshot is quite simple: The German government has created a tool to add a total of about a trillion euros or even more of debt.
It is true that to some extent, all of the above is simply a local variant of a general EU-plus-UK frenzy: With Brussels, London, and Paris as agitators-in-chief, the whole shabby, stagnating bloc is dreaming big about going into massive debt, perhaps even, in essence, confiscating private savings, to confront Russia with or without the US. That is just another application of the key current governing principle of Western elites: Rule by permanent emergency. And if there is no real emergency around, they just make one up.
I have skipped a large section of this somewhat lengthy article. You can continue reading that section here, or finish up with the last few paragraphs below...
This means Germany’s next chancellor deliberately went against the already clearly declared will of the voters, and he did so by using a transparent dirty trick. All the parties helping him do so, including the Greens and his likely future coalition partners from the Social Democrats, have sullied themselves.
And all that while Merz has shown his contempt for law and decency by inviting the internationally wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to Germany, (See what I mean about being antisemitic?) and Sarah Wagenknecht’s BSW has been kept out of parliament by obvious election manipulation and extremely likely falsification. No wonder many Germans have lost belief in the traditional parties. If there is one force standing to profit from all of the above it is, of course, the AfD, Germany’s strongest opposition party now. German Centrists: Don’t cry on our shoulders and don’t whine about ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ when your silly firewall against the AfD crumbles. You only have yourselves to blame.
Is there any hope left? Yes, maybe. Because although this is a terrible beginning, the policy just started is also meant to be carried out over a decade and more. Much may happen in that time. For instance, German corporations might finally – if quietly – rebel against being crippled by a self-defeating sanctions war against Russia, especially when their US competitors will be back in the Russia business, as they are clearly itching to. The Ukraine conflict may end in such a manner that Germany’s Zelensky stans simply won’t have anyone left to send the money to. Last but not least, even currently hyperventilating Germans may perhaps notice when Russia does not, actually, attack.
Yet, for now, Germany is continuing on its path of severe and self-evident national self-harm. And unfortunately, history teaches that Germans can stay such a course through to a very bitter end. There are no guarantees that things will be better this time.
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