For what it's worth, I would like to put the Spiegel online in perspective. About twice per month a colleague will send a link such as this one to me as if I and other Americans have been caught unaware.
The problem is that if you look at the magazine over several months, this particular writer has missed the idea that Europe is about 2-3 years behind the US, but certainly soon to ship many of its jobs to China in the same exact fashion.
Perhaps the title should add "could the EU's middle class be heading the same way?"
Let me highlight some interesting remarks.
newcomers more concerned with preserving their guaranteed rights than with making the extraordinary effort necessary for success - did nothing to foster the kind of daring you see in the United States.
Smackdown of eastern Germans that is another trademark of Der Spiegel. West Germans are fairly risk averse, IMHO and this remark is more than a little smug.
Third, the United States is the only nation on earth that can do business globally in its own currency. Indeed, the dollar has established itself as the world's currency.
AFAIK, the dollar did not promote itself, but rather the Bretton Woods agreement elevated the dollar to reserve currency.
Whoever wants to own it has to purchase it in the United States.
No comment necessary.
They're going into the 21st century like a poverty-stricken, Third World family, living from hand to mouth without any financial reserves whatsoever.
The statement is a bit dramatic. ;-) Housing bubble looks pretty dire to me and I would not want my assets overallocated in USD, but this writer ignores the notion that if everything implodes, the Ami's will stop buying German products. Seriously, there are a lot of Germans that have not made that connection.
Some production sectors -- such as the furniture industry, consumer electronics, many automobile part suppliers, and now computer manufacturers -- have left the country for good.
exactly as they have in Germany.
Trade deficit numbers for the EU and China came out recently and surprise, surprise, the deficit was much higher this year than last. Schumer and Graham have been transformed into Mandelson and Ferrero-Waldner.
If you read Der Spiegel long enough, you come to realize that the spin on everything is that things in Germany may be tough, but Germans are smarter, braver, thinner, healthier, more efficient, more moral, better informed and despite being better in every way than the Ami's, less nationalistic than they are. ;-)
IMHO of course. |
