The Duran Podcast - German government heading towards collapse

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

German government heading towards collapse

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in Germany. Trouble for the pirate, for pirate Schultz. He's got some trouble. How easy is it for a government in Germany to collapse? I don't think it's easy to have a collapse in the government in Germany, is it? But Schultz is heading towards that, but it's going to be the mechanism. It's going to be very difficult. So, I mean, Germany is stuffed with Schultz.

Yes, it is very, very difficult indeed. I mean, the whole political structure in Germany was designed after the Second World War to make a governmental crisis all but impossible to ensure political stability above all because of the, you know, the memories that people had back then of what happened in the 1920s. during the time of the Weimar Republic. So a political crisis, a collapse of a government in Germany is an extraordinarily difficult thing. And it's, by the way, very difficult in Germany

to change governments at all when it happens, which it does obviously. I mean, it tends to be a gradual incremental process. If you go back, for example, to the time when the CDU began to lose power in Germany, Germany in the late 1960s and the SPD government eventually emerged, led by Vili Brandt. I mean, it didn't happen from one day to the next. I mean, it was, you had to go through a whole series of events.

First, Adonauer had to retire. Then we had the brief period of Ludwig Erhard being chancellor. And then, you know, gradually the SPD and the third party, the free, Democrats had to develop a sort of relationship with each other. And eventually, we did get a change of government in Germany. And then the Brandt Schmidt government, led by the SPD, remained in power in Germany right through the 1970s and into the early 80s. And this is perhaps the closest, but it's a very inexact parallel to what we're seeing today,

which is, of course, that was that government, the Brant Schmidt government, was a coalition of the SPD and the Free Democrats. And it failed, it ended, but again, it was a complex and protracted process because the FDP at that time, led by Hans Dietrich Genscher and Count Otto Lamsdorf to figures who were, you know, absolutely permanent fixtures of the German political scene at one time, they decided that it was time for the FDP to switch sides and to ally with Helmut Kohl and the CDU. So again, it was a complex process. So, and it was an orderly one as well.

I mean, you know, there was all kinds of confected, disfutable. agreements, a pro-economic policy, which are never really real. But eventually, as I said, they did manage to switch. Now, this time, it is different because what we're starting to see in Germany is a genuine government crisis of a kind, as I said, that Germany really has not had. And it all has come together over the last few weeks. Now, the proximate cause is a budget crisis. There's said to be a 9 billion euro gap hole in the German budget. Germany, by the way, has a constitutional law, which basically requires the budget to be in balance. I'm simplifying, but that's what it says.

The budget has to be sorted out by the 14th of November. There is a huge amount of disagreement as to how that's supposed to be done. free Democrats who are again in coalition with the SPD but also with the Greens they want to pursue the kind of small state free market liberal economic policy with which they're identified so they want to cut taxes restore dynamism to the economy in retrench heavily on spending do all of those kind of things that's not a popular policy with the SPD the social Democrats and it is a very unpopular policy with the Greens. The free Democrats control the finance ministry, and Christian Lindner, their leader, is the finance minister. Robert Harbeck, the leader of the

Greens, is the economics minister. He wants to pursue a diametrically different policy. He wants to go all, you know, fire, or go for growth, you know, all, you know, all, you know, or, you know, or, you power ahead with growth. He wants to embark on, frankly, deficit and debt spending. He wants to invest in all sorts of industries. But of course, the industries he wants to invest in are the green industries. He wants to accelerate the green transition. So Harbeck and Lidner are taking diametrically conflicting views. And in the middle of it all, there is Olaf Schultz, the Chancellor, he needs to keep both parties on side if his coalition is going to survive with a majority. He could, in theory, if the free Democrats opt out, trudge on as the Chancellor of a Minority Government

and try to hold on that way until September, next September, next year, when the parliamentary elections are going to happen. I don't think anybody in Germany is keen on that idea. But anyway, he could in theory do that, but he's trying to paper over the gaps. He's trying to get the free Democrats and the Greens to agree. There's been all kinds of crisis meetings to do that. Haabek announced that he's prepared to make a big concession. Intel was supposed to open a big factory in Germany

to establish to build chips there. It was all part of the technological upgrading of Germany. Intel has now backed out of that. It's a bad sign, you could say. Harbeck says that in light of that, the subsidies that the German government was going to provide Intel to open this factory, instead of being plowed back into the industrial program

that Harbeck wants, they can be used instead to reduce the budget as Lindner wants. So he's made what he calls a big concession. Whether that will impress Lindner, I have no idea. But anyway, we can talk all about this, about the budget crisis, about the political crisis and all that, you know, for hours and weeks and whatever. The key thing to understand,

the thing that's triggered all of this, is that over the last few weeks, few months, the Germans, the German political class have finally understood the Germany is going down, that the economy is imploding, that there is a crisis in German industry. There's a lot of article about this in the Financial Times today. That without cheap energy from Russia, the three main... parts of the German industrial economy, the auto industry, the chemical industry and the engineering industry are all in crisis. They also understand that the famous metal-stern, the big family companies that have formed the historic backbone of the German economy are an even bigger crisis than the big industrial groups.

So suddenly from having long believed that Germany is this indestructible economic ship that will just go on sailing through any storm, they've suddenly realized that everything on the country is falling apart, that Volkswagen is now talking about closing factories in Germany, that industry is in decline and apparently unstoppable decline. So everybody is looking to bail out. They're all staking positions. And the liberal, the free Democrats are saying, you know, it's because our economic package, cutting taxes, cutting spending, bonfire to regulations and all of that, that's not being done. So it's our fault that everything is falling apart in this way. And the Greens are saying, well, you know, everything's falling apart.

But the reason it's falling apart is because we're not moving forward in the way we should in pursuing Germany's new industrial tech transition to the great new shiny high tech, high tech, green industries of the future that we advocate and we need to start doing that as well. So everybody's staking positions because they know that the economy is going downhill and that the government, even if it holds together, is going to be defeated badly in the elections in September next year. Yeah, boy, the greens. Bad move, putting the greens in your government. Very bad move. That doesn't only apply to Germany. Always keep the greens far, far away from government.

But, yeah, I think the Volkswagen announcement that they're going to be closing down plants I think that was that was the big one. Yes. That's what really, really woke up the establishment of the elite in Germany to the problems that they have. You would think that Germany, the reputation of Germany planning, detailed, meticulous, cautious planning, you would think that before they decided to buy into, Biden's project Ukraine adventure, removing Putin, destroying Russia, balkanizing Russia, taken over Russia, using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia.

You would think that the German leadership, the German establishment, Schultz, and the people around Schultz, would have paused a bit on buying into this Biden plan and said, you know, maybe sanctioning Russia and cutting off Russia is going to hurt us. I mean, it was pretty obvious. I mean, we called it the industrialization. We said it three years ago. Yes. How did they miss this?

Well, this is, you're actually putting it. You're putting your finger on this because of course, this was the reputation of the Germans. That they were very methodical, very systematic, that they thought very hard before making decisions, that they never muddled through that on the contrary, all, all, um, you know, approaches that the Germans always took to any problem, were always very carefully prepared and prepared long in advance and all the details were ironed out. And I think that was once true of Germany.

I think, you know, having quite a lot of dealings with Germany, I think if you're talking about the Germany at the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s, that was how Germany was. But what has happened, and it's not so unusual, is that over time complacency and atrophy began to come into the picture. You started to get people rise, not just in Germany, German politics, but in German business as well, who were basically inheriting what had been passed down to them from others. I mean, if you look at, say, I mean, the comparison.

And the comparison I always like to make is between Robert Harbeck, who is the economics minister today, and people like Ludwig Harhart, who ran the German economy in the 50s. And just seeing photographs of the two and juxtaposing them will show you the extraordinary difference between the two men. But anyway, somehow, you know, that began to happen. The Germans became very accustomed to the fact that everything. in Germany was going well. And they just assumed very lazily that they always would. And that ultimately political decisions should be followed and should become paramount.

There's always been current within German politics. It's deeply Atlantis, very skeptical and hostile to the Russians, tends to think of the Russians as, you know, disorganized and chaotic and inefficient in some way, that the Russians wouldn't be able to get by without Germany, whereas Germany would have no problem getting by without Russia, the relationship between Germany and Russia was Germany giving and the Russians taking and Germany teaching and the Russians learning. It was all basically being done out of Germany's generosity and that sort of thing.

And you could still see that. I mean, Harbeck is still talking about Germany. You can read this in the Financial Times article. Germany is the third biggest economy in the world. Now, it might have been that in 1965. It is certainly not that today. I mean, that is delusional. I mean, that is absolutely fantastical thinking.

But, you know, they still cling to this. And one has to say also, that two other things have happened to Germany over the last 30, 40 years, which have, I think, accelerated this process of atrophy. Firstly, the enormous development of the European Union and of its various structures. Now, I return to this programme after programme, but just to repeat again, one of the effects of the European Union, the construction of the European Union, the construction of the European Union. European Union is that to the extent that there is political energy in the member states, it has been drawn off and callalized into the EU centre, which has its own priorities. So that political leaders in states no longer are political leaders in the normal,

accepted sense of the word, in the way that, you know, Adonauer and Earhart and Brandt and Schmidt and Cole once were, they are rather functionaries who follow the line that is set by Brussels. And that has affected Germany to the same extent that it's affected all of the other EU countries as well. And by the way, with all of that has come all of the usual policies, the policies on social issues and all of those things that are Brussels love. and which are very big in Germany as well now. I mean, you know, that's a major issue within German politics as well. So, which is a distraction, as I said, from the hard economic things. So there's this.

And the other thing is the long reign, and again, I've talked about this many times, the long reign of Angela Merkel, which was a reign that fostered German complacency because she presented herself as the leader who fostered stability and kept everything together and all of those things, which to some extent she did. But she did that by creating an atmosphere of immobilism, preventing development, letting German industries and German technologies and German technologies. gradually lose their edge, making German industry itself complacent, and creating a political desert at the center of the political system. So this long period, a little bit like Metternich in Habsburg, Austria, as you like, you know, where one person dominates everything, is able to control everything basically through

various intrigues and all of the kinds of things that Merkel excelled in. But at the same time, letting everybody, everything stagnate beneath her, that is also, I think, partly what Merkel achieved. And without Merkel there anymore, we started to see all the contradictions and faults in the system that she, fostered rise to the surface. By the way, the Financial Times article for the first time concedes that as well, it actually acknowledges that many of the problems Germany is facing now are a product of the Merkel era. Going forward, what should Germany do?

Well, leave the European Union. Here's an idea. Leave the European Union. Engage with the US. Engage with the US. with Russia, leave the EU, because at the end of the day, it does seem like it's the EU that has dragged and is dragging Germany down. Well, indeed. I mean, what should Germany do is going to be very different from what Germany will actually do.

Now, you're absolutely right. What Germany should do is rethink completely its policies, change direction radically. patch up the relationship with Russia and the war agreed to a political stabilization in Europe and use the time that that provides

which will be to I mean if they can get the energy flows from Russia moving again and Putin has said that the Russians would be prepared to do that that would buy Germany time and space for a radical reform of the German industrial and economic system without you know

having to go through the period of crisis and catastrophe that we are facing at the moment. And it's important to say there are people in Germany who do suggest that. I mean, unfortunately, they're all found either in the IFD or in a somewhat different way in Sao Varga Knecht's gruffing. The German political establishment aren't able to see that. And they're turning their face against it. no less a person than the president of the Bundesbank came forward and said, you know, we must even think about doing these things.

We have to just go on doing basically what we're doing because we can't trust the Russians, they're the bad people, we just have to go forging on with all the problems that we have at the moment. That, by the way, is, again, an example of how Germany, the German political class has deteriorated. Because, of course, in the 1960s, they did exactly that. In the 1960s,

they realized that the whole process of German unification, which had been pursued by the Adanao government in the 50s, had hit a brick wall, a literal wall with the construction of the Berlin wall. The Germany's economic development, was at risk because of the need to maintain stable supplies, you know, energy and build up relationships with Eastern Europe. And in the 1960s, the German political class had the agency

and the political will to change course. And they did that. And they did that very successfully. That was what Ostpolitik was all about. That was what Vali Brandt became identified with. And they did it and it worked incredibly well. And it delivered several decades of economic growth and stability and prosperity in Germany. And it also made German unification eventually possible. So they had that ability before, but they don't have it anymore. Because as I said, they're not going to agree with what the IFDA wants. They're not going to agree with what the Sao Wagner Knauts wants.

They're not going to break with the Americans. They're not going to make up with the Russians. They're going to talk about taking money from Intel and giving it to the budget and they're going to come up with all sorts of things, moving the deck chairs, shifting the deck chairs around on the Titanic, which is what the German economy has become. And I'm afraid the reality is that things are going to go on that way. because this particular political class the Germany has now is not capable of that kind of fundamental shift

and change in perspective. One day, maybe, probably one day, we will see a breakthrough. We will see the eye of der or the Saravagan-echnect or someone like that, finally breakthrough. But, you know, we're looking at years and years ahead before that happens. And in the meantime, things will just go on getting. was. Yeah. It has to hit rock bottom before it starts to get better. Unfortunately, that's how these things go. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.orgals.com. We are on Rumble

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