Germany

An article in the National Post suggests General Motors may look to divert some of its bailout money to Europe in the wake of a chill in German government support for subsidies. Talk of using taxpayer money to benefit workers in other…

You could see this one coming given the humiliating circumstances under which the German Chancellor learned that GM was pulling out of the Magna deal. The BBC is now reporting that Germany will give General Motors no aid to restructure…

I have been reading press accounts of the GM decision to back out of the Opel/Vauxhall sale to the Magna/Sberbank consortium from various countries. There are a lot of different perspectives on this event in the U.S., Belgium, Spain,…

The sale to Canadian auto parts maker Magna International and its partner, Russian lender Sberbank is off. With bankruptcy now behind it, General Motors now feels confident it can proceed with Opel under the GM umbrella. From the GM press…

Paul Krugman has noticed that trade has absolutely collapsed with this economic downturn. It is worse than the Great Depression. Question: is this aiding global re-balancing? Here are two data points from Europe today which lead to that…

Below is a Market Watch video showing what ordinary Germans think heading into the general election.  Right now it’s looking like a right of center government of the CDU/CSU/FDP.  But, it will be down to the wire. Likely, there…

Now that it has emerged from bankruptcy and received free money from the Federal Government, General Motors is seriously thinking about keeping Opel by raising capital.  The German government has been urging GM to make a decision about…

The list of countries with deflation is growing by the month.  We have Spain, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland.  Now add Germany. German consumer prices fell for the first time in 22 years in July, official figures have shown.…

Alcohol used to seen as a recession-proof good. This downturn is changing that thinking as evidence of cutbacks in spending, consumption, and on-premise drinking abound.  Back in the Spring of 2008, Nielsen conducted a bunch of surveys…

Germany never participated in the upswing of the housing bubble. This fact has led German politicians of all stripes to mistakenly believe their banking system was somehow immune to the problems infecting bubble markets like the US or…