What the Germans are reading
By Global Macro Monitor
When real interest rates are negative resources are misallocated and we pay dearly in the future. This was the case during the housing bubble when Playboy bunnies were forsaking their careers to pursue the real estate gold rush (see here). Now, according to Agora Financial, the front page of Germany’s top selling newspaper, Bild, “has forsaken its usual topless model in favor of gold bars… which the paper is giving away all day.” This kind of makes you wanna sell. Naw….we’ll let the market tell us when its time not the magazine cover indicator.
The headline reads, “100 Ingots to Win: Today You Can Get Gold With Bild”
“What the Germans are reading” is a shitty title that sends another piece of schrapnel into the back of an objective and informed American citizenry. Bild is the most widely read newspaper in Germany, printing about 3 million which get around to some small multiple thereof. It’s garbage and it has obnoxious influence on German politics. There are however a number of social dem sponsored or social dem leaning dailies, including Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, Tageszeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung. In total they print millions which get around to some small multiple thereof. In addition the establishment center/right newspapers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Die Zeit (a weekly) do a better job of maintaining journalistic standards than the NYT and the WaPo do. This is a country that is smaller than Texas, with a population of 80 million and 418 universities, the vast majority of which are free or virtually free to the millions of students who attend them. Germany is reading more than Bild.
Read the headline again. It’s “What the Germans are reading”, not “This is the only thing that Germans are reading”.
All you write is true, but the quality papers do not represent Johnny Sixpack’s opinion. And they don’t give away free gold, that’s for sure.
As for the free universities: It would have been refreshing to see students reading BILD there, as it is always nice to see people step out of line.
Nice to encounter a being close to me in the taxonomy. In my opinion the definite article here has no purpose other than to determine the broadest possible interpretation for its noun. “The Germans” here refers to the Germans and not to German prols.