Always when there is a significant event in Germany, I try to get the point of view from the international press and usually there is not much written about it abroad. The more I was surprised to find at least one article in nearly every international newspaper on the case of Thilo Sarrazin, an absolute unimportant ex-politician who is now just an associate member of the Bundesbank-board, Germanys central bank, which has become pretty unimportant in the Eurozone with it’s ECB.
Sarrazin was Secretary of Treasury and Budget in the federal-state of Berlin until Berlin’s mayor successfully sent him to the Bundesbank – glad to get rid of him. Sarrazin, who is a member of the centre-left SPD, is quite well known for his harsh way of articulating and already a year ago, he received attention for his quote on turkish immigrants: “I don’t have to accept anyone who lives from the state, regrets this state, refuses to reasonably provide for his kids education and constantly produces new small headscarf girls.”(translated from German: “Ich muß niemanden anerkennen, der vom Staat lebt, diesen Staat ablehnt, für die Ausbildung seiner Kinder nicht vernünftig sorgt und ständig neue kleine Kopftuchmädchen produziert.”).

Last week, Thilo Sarrazin published a book, named “Germany abolishes itself” (trans: “Deutschland schafft sich ab”). In this book Sarrazin made up the theory, that due to the high grade of genetic heritability of intelligence and the fact, that lower-educated people have more children than higher-educates ones, Germany slowly becomes more stupid. This – to come to Sarrazin’s favorite issue: immigration – would be enforced by the fact, that low-educated muslims come to Germany and make Germany a muslimic country of fools.

I don’t want to write about the immigration issue today. Personally I think, that Sarrazin exaggerates and uses inappropriate language, but that his positions have a reasonable background. However, I want to talk about something different.

When this quotes came out, the political reaction were harsh. Angela Merkel called for a removal of Sarrazin from the Bundesbank-board, Sigmar Gabriel, head of the oppositional SPD, already launched the process to kick Sarrazin out of the party. Both had to pull back in the last days.
Absolutely surprisingly a huge majority of Germans seems to support Sarrazin. 30% say to fully agree to his comments (35% undecided), 52% think Sarrazin should stay in the Bundesbank (20% undecided) ans 18% would support a party which was chaired by Sarrazin. A more detailed poll shows, that Sarrazin’s supporters come from anywhere in the political spectrum.

But, what is going on here?

For many years since the war, Germany has been a country in which comments on Hitler, Israel and immigrants have been absolutely tabooized. I don’t know how many politicians I saw step down for making uncautious comments on one of those issues.
A great example is also TV-presenter Eva Herrmann, which wrote a book about family values saying in one sentence, that besides all the crimes in Nazi-Germany, it’s family policy was better than today. I think Eva Herrmann is unemployed today.

This is quite different to the U.S., where it has become “normal” that right-wing Christian fundamentalists come to funerals of homosexuals with banners reading “God hates fags”.
Germany actually has become a very open and liberal country, but as the Sarrazin issues shows: Not a country of the freedom of speech.
When I posted a comment like this on my Facebook-page, I received furious comments from some friends. One, which really reflected the situation in Germany as I see it was this one: “the freedom of speech has within the balance of fundamental human rights its limitations”.

I was shocked and disgusted by that comment. But this is exactly the point, I’ve been criticizing for a long time. German’s, especially German politicians, prefer a political correct mainstream, they refuse a real controversial debate.

In my opinion this is just wrong: The freedom of speech is nothing of true and false, it’s about different opinions. Of course there are opinions I don’t want to hear or which i disagree on, but it’s an opinion. And sometimes even an inconvenient opinion can be the truth, such e.g. that more than twice as much teenagers from immigrated families are criminal, than from German families – those who published the statistics were publicly bashed for weeks.

Especially the SPD, which usually presents itself as progressive and modern, has become a stronghold of mainstreamism. Just some month ago, Wolfgang Clement, former governor and “Super-Secretary” under Schröder, faced the same party-exclusion-process, which Thilo Sarrazin will face. And Clements “misconduct” was much less terrible: He just endorsed the conservative incumbent in the most controversial gubernatorial election of Hesse. In the end he was allowed to stay in the party, but left voluntarily.

As a quintessence, I am glad, that the case of Sarrazin has shattered Germany (and even some people abroad) that much. I don’t see much of a future for Sarrazin himself – not in politics, maybe in the economy or literature – but I think, that for the very first time, people recognize, that the political “keep the controversial down”-attitude is bad for Germany’s political culture. And I hope for the future, more courageous people will arise and say their opinion.

The conclusion is simple: Any approach to regulate free, capitalist financial markets will either do nothing, or affect markets in a way, hedge funds will use to gain benefits. Therefore, the only way to regulate hedge funds effectively is to absolutely deregulate the markets, but it seems pretty impossible to me, that politicians would do so.

But the Party, and especially their candidate fpr chancellor, Frank-Walter Steinmeyer, keep on playing the big ones. Most ridiculous: Steinmeyer calles Secretary of Commece and Technology Guttenberg a “jobkiller” this morning. Well, he did so last week and got the answer from the voters. Guttenberg is extremely popular and a vast majority of Germmans supports his course. But Social Democrats can’t realize this any more

Today the plot has changed. Our politicians are not talking about stimulation-packages and state-guarantees any more. Today state has to bailout individual companies. Is there a difference? YES!! Is that bad? YES!!

Deon’t get me wrong. Even for me, it’s hard to see thousands of people get fired, just because the financial crisis hit their company. I honestly think unemployment is one of our worst problems (even before the crisis). But I also think, that sometimes fundamental changes in our economy lead to changes in the in landscape of companies.

I wanna give you an example of a company, just a few yards away from the office I write: Arcandor. Arcandor is amerchandising-concern and owns Karstadt, a chain of warehouses. 50 years ago, Karstadt and it’s competitors Kaufhof, Hertie and Horten were the number one shops downtown. From milk and cheese to ties, to books, to water boilers: You just needed to go in there and buy.

Now Arcandor seems to be broke. And – of course – one day after the Opel-bailout, Arcandor applied for an own bailout. Looking on the job-side, Arcandor is nearly as big as Opel and they have another great argument: If Arcandor broke and Karstadt closes down, it would harm the “german shopping-culture”.

Well, probably true, but Arcandor is not just broke because of the crisis: More than a year ago, Karstadt already faced the threat of closing and could only be saved by a sharp reduction in wages. Horten, one of the former competitors to Karstadt, closed down several years ago. Hertie, another competitor, had to sale a good bunch of stores a couple of years ago and is insolvent again. Karstadt and Kaufhof, by the way, report a reduction of income year-by-year for quite a while. The truth is: It’s not the crisis that caused the Arcandor-insolvency, it’s just the sad matter of fast, that the “german shopping-culture” has changed.

In contrast to those huge department-stores, shopping-malls boom in Germany. Analysis proove, that germans prefer either discount-stores or specialized-dealers. Karstadt is somewhere in the middle. Look at me: I confess, I shop pretty brand-focused. Karstadt has only one of the brands I wear, and even if: 200 meters further down the street is a mall with bid stores of all of my brands.

Again, I feel sorry for the people loosing jobs. But the case of Arcandor shows, that this kind of stores, like Karstadt, is not up to date. The government of Germany can bailout Arcandor, but they cannot change the fact, that people won’t buy there any more. So a bailout would only cost the taxpayer.

People will loose their jobs, I know, but with a closing down of Karstadt, new jobs will be created elsewhere, because Germans have to buy their stuff anyway!

I wanna write a short conclusion, all the rest is pretty detailed: Governments should carefully think, whether a bailout helps the company or just delays the necessary.

What about Opel, by the way? Well, it would take too long to explain my position on that. I’ll post that another day!

Nearly every party uses the internet. Conventions, which have always been like a funeral, are suddenly a big party, with emotion-creating speeches, and not just reports and statements. Parties change their campaigning. Frank-Walter  Steinmeier, Merkel’s challenger, opened is campaign in a circuit arena, not on a shaky stage, somewhere in his constituency. Angela Merkel is a little more conservative. She needs no spektacular campaign, polls are satisfying and the rest will be done by her prospected coalition partner, the Libertarians.

But the people don’t want old politicians copying Obama. They want an own Obama. And therefore two young politicians seem to be well-suited for that job:

Heiko Maas, Social-Democratic candidate for Governor of the Saarland, one of Germany’s smallest states, is just 42 years old. He is trying to get votes via the “beauty”-factor. His banners are pretty Gilette-style, isn’t it? According to the polls, it seems to work, as Heiko Maas’ popularity rises, but still: To boring!

Another young hot-spot is taking the lead in the race for the Obama-Germania 2009: Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. YES, it’s a name! But the part fromMaria (yes, it’s a male-name) to Sylvester is just “decoration”.

Guttenberg became – surprisingly – new Secretary for Commerce and Technology in Germany, just three month ago. Guttenberg is a royal, but that’s where the image of a conservative ends: Guttenberg is 37, runs a half-marathon several times a week, has been interviewed my nearly any magacine in Germany, has easily saved Opel, calls President Obama Barrack, has a PhD and met his wife at the Love Parade, the world largest techno-party. Isn’t that a man? He is, and many Germans are sure: One day he will be the first bavarian chancellor. And the good thing: He is not immitating Obama like so many others, he is just himself!!

So, Barrack, be careful! The next Polit-Popstars is to come – and probably B.O. and K.T.M.N.J.J.P.S.J.S.F.v.u.z.G will only be the first ones, the Adam and Adam, of a new type of politician.