|
|
Post by Ian Thomas on Aug 31, 2023 16:07:54 GMT 10
Sounds dire. A deadly combo of trends: birthrate collapse, cheap Chinese manufactures, energy costs much lower in the 'States - think frack gas. And to top things off, Russian gas got the chop. Thank 🇺🇸 for that? In Oz there's talk of a mortgage implosion: a million+ households bought on fixed rates and they're now due to go variable. 📈 'Bad mortgage loans'? Where have we heard that expression before? 
Then there's China's invidious situation, throw in a world food crisis and .... yeah, we seem to be looking at a global recession. Or Depression?
|
|
|
|
Post by johannes on Aug 31, 2023 19:40:17 GMT 10
The Schröder/Merkel system was a Ponzi scheme: Germany relied on cheap Russian energy and cheap German labour to produce cheap machinery tools for the Chinese market, the Chinese use those tools and their even cheaper labour to spam the world with their trinkets, everybody in the EU is broke and deeply in debt, wich makes the value of the Euro even lower and German machinery tools even more competitive... Germany, as a country, became richer (at least on the paper), Germans as individuals became poorer. This, like all Ponzis, could not last forever: If Germany could do the neo-mercantilist thing, why should everybody else play by the monetarist rules of the 1980s and 1990s? If Schröder and Merkel could do "Germany First", what could stop Trump from implementing "America First" and the Dicynodont from implementing the Inflation Reduction Act? Why should everybody simply roll over and accept deindustrialialization? And why shouldn't the Chinese simply use their German machinery tools to build their own cars and export them? Shutting down nuclear power just when the world is in a massive panic over CO2 was just idiotic (or did the former East German Communist Youth League secretary Merkel wanted the country to become more dependent on Russin oil  ?). |
|
|
|
Post by dennisw on Sept 1, 2023 11:16:51 GMT 10
It is not just Germany the whole world is in trouble, just check the debt levels of most countries both government debt and consumer debt. People will stop spending soon because they have no money.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ian Thomas on Sept 1, 2023 22:07:36 GMT 10
Strong words, J. Forcefully put. 👍 From the outside looking in, I wouldn't write Germany off just yet. Not by a long shot! 🇩🇪 Cars, Biomed & general Industrial manufactures are her big 3 export earners. As you say, heretofore German industry has been powered by cheap energy, mainly coal & gas. And as we know, these have been cut off for ideological reasons. Which means, imho & fwiw, German voters have some serious political thinking to do v/v nuclear and forging some sort of workable economic arrangement with Russia, starting with gas. When ideology collides with reality, history tells us who wins. If you think about it, German technological genius together with Russia's vast resources would make a hugely powerful combination. There'd be no thought of de-industrialisation then. Trouble is, there are geopolitical roadblocks stopping any moves in that direction and there's a lot of historical baggage to sort ... Unlike Australia's minerals-based economy, Germany's export customers are highly diverse. Germany could get along without China whereas Australia? Not so much.
|
|
|
|
Post by dennisw on Sept 2, 2023 10:57:24 GMT 10
The lack of Russian gas is a problem for much of Europe but it is being slightly offset by new gas supplies coming from Israel, which is keen to increase its market share. I don't know how competition with Russia for market share is likely to play out, the Russians have turned a bit of a blind eye to Israel's attacks on Iranian assets in Syria but that could change.
|
|
|
|
Post by vincent on Sept 2, 2023 10:58:04 GMT 10
It is not just Germany the whole world is in trouble, just check the debt levels of most countries both government debt and consumer debt. People will stop spending soon because they have no money. Peter Zeihan sees the whole world going down, too. |
|
|
|
Post by dennisw on Sept 3, 2023 9:48:23 GMT 10
A good way to anticipate future economic activity is to keep an eye on the copper price, copper is used in everything from houses and cars to electronics and everything that uses them, manufacturing slows copper goes down. When I played the markets more than I do today I had some success following copper prices.
|
|
?).
