Author Archives: Tobias Schwarz

About Tobias Schwarz

German, turned 30 a while ago, balding slowly, hopefully with grace. A carnival junkie, who, after studies in business and politics in Mannheim, Paris, and London, is currently living in his hometown of Mainz, Germany, again. Became New Labourite during a research job at the House of Commons, but difficult to place in German party-political terms. Liberal in the true sense of the term.

His political writing is mostly on A Fistful of Euros and on facebook these days. Occasional Twitter user and songwriter. His personal blog is almost a diary. Even more links at about.me.

Just in time.

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Well timed ahead of the French referendum, Deutsche Bahm AG and la SNCF are demonstrating what “ever closer union” can be about… increased quality of life (AP via IHT):

A new high-speed train line will link France and Germany beginning in 2007, cutting travel time between Paris and Frankfurt to under four hours, officials said Monday. … Currently, the fastest train connection between Paris and Frankfurt via Saarbr?cken and Mannheim takes 6 hours, while passengers to Stuttgart have to go via Strasbourg.

Schr?der: early elections in Autumn.

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I suppose German politics aren’t entirely predictable anymore. A few minutes ago, German Chancellor Schroeder confirmed earlier statements by Franz Muentefering, the SPD’s chairman, that the current red-green coalition will seek a – constitutionally problematic – vote of no-confidence to allow the early dissolution of the Bundestag and hold federal elections in autumn this year.
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EU recognized by the CIA.

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Last week, on a visit to Germany, Henry Kissinger stated that Europe “now has a number”. Well, I’m not sure which one in particular he was referring to, or if the CIA’s decision to list the EU in its world fact book has anything to do with Kissinger’s realisation – but depending on the outcome of the Constitutional ratification process, the decision to include the EU at this point of time will either be judged prophetic, or unfortunate – or as another example of “divide et impera”, of supporting those in Europe who campaign against a “superstate” (whatever that may be). After all, it’s a “fact-book”, isn’t it? From the CIA World Fact Book “What’s New” section –

“…the European Union has been included as an “Other” entity at the end of the listing. The European Union continues to accrue more nation-like characteristics for itself and so a separate listing was deemed appropriate. A fuller explanation may be found under the European Union Preliminary statement.”

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Shifting points of reference?

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Two days ago, Brad DeLong published an unfortunate post with an even more unfortunate title – “G?nter Grass minimizes the Holocaust” – in which he harshly criticised the German Nobel laureate G?nter Grass and even called him “Nazi scum”, an accusation he retracted later following intense criticism on his own blog as well as on others, including Crooked Timber – for statements he made in a radio address on German NDR radio a couple of days ago (“Freiheit nach B?rsenma?” – mp3 in German, read by himself, text in German (via DIE ZEIT), English translation) which was later translated and reprinted by the New York Times on May 7, the day before the 60th anniversary of VE-day.
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Locusts, or Incongruency Revisited.

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It seems we’re not the only ones who are beginning to see governance model incongruencies behind some of the German economic ills (see two of my last posts (1, 2), and, especially the comments to the last one).

Over at Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell (who knows Germany well, having beeen a research fellow at the The Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) gets a bit angry at the Economist for their usually biased coverage of Continental European social and economic models, before declaring his support for Franz M?ntefering.
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General Counting.

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Her Majesties’ subjects have spoken again. It’s just that we don’t know yet what exactly they have said. Well, a majority among them will have probably sighed a little in the booth and then more or less resignedly or enthusiastically ticked off the box next to their local Labour candidate, thus likely ensuring Blairs “historic” second and a half term in office. Earlier, Exit polls predicted a reduced Labour majority of 66 seats.

But because we want to know all this in detail, it is worth mentioning again on top of the page that afoe’s Nick Barlow is blogging the election night over at “What you can get away with” as well as on the 2005 UK General election blog. Here’s why he thinks it’s worth staying up:

“Conservatives take back Putney on a 6.5% swing, Labour hold Newcastle Central but have an 11% swing to the Liberal Democrats. There?s not going to be anything even resembling a uniform national swing tonight, so this could be a long night.”

If that’s still not enough information for the true election junkies among you, then check the list of election bloggers compiled by Chicken Yoghurt. Oh, and before I forget it, the BBC does also offer extensive election coverage including an automatically updating scorecard.

Hysteria In The Kindergarten.

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Someone must have put something really bad in their lemonade. I am at loss for words about the hysteria that the ongoing German class struggle has become (for more information see the comments to my last entry). It’s like a gang fight in kindergarten.

While Nobel Price laureate G?nther Grass (literature, not economics) made headlines with his important realization that even German MEPs are not living in a dimension of their own, and thus – in spite of the constitution’s stipulation that their decision’s are only subject to their conscience – are often subject to pressure from “a ring of lobbyists”, Guido Westerwelle, chairman of the German Liberals, thought he was missing out on all the fun and – in a truly surprising move – lashed out against trade unions, apaprently calling them ‘a plague upon the country’ and ‘traitors of the interests of employees’.

The latest, and most bizarre, development: In what is apparently an attempt to amend Godwin’s Law [“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”] , the Jewish German historian Michael Wolffsohn compared the SPD’s chairman Franz M?ntefering’s statement about ‘Financial investors that descended upon companies like locusts’ to the anti-jewish agitation of the Nazi era and demanded that Mr. M?ntefering apologize to all affected by the Nazi dicatatorship.

According to a report from the Frankfurter Neue Presse he wrote among other things (translation mine) –

“…a boycot of companies is called for. And that should nor remind me, as a historian and a Jew, of January 1, 1933? ‘Don’t buy from Jews’ they said back then and just as now it was allegedly all for the good of the people and the simple man against the “greedy capital”, which was called “Jewish capital” then.”

Paul Spiegel, Chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, hurried to tell the press that he finds it absurd to allege antisemitic motives for M?ntefering’s statements, but added that comparisons of humans to animals were generally hapless.

Hapless. Quite right. Like the entire debate. At least now I know that Germany really needs more kindergarten teachers…

21st Century Socialism.

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As all of Germany seems to engage either in market or Marx bashing these days, I thought it is time to add my two cents to the debate – and I’ll do it with the help of the US Europhile Jeremy Rifkin, who gave the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” an interview about an old book of his, “the end of work.” The current German debate – the “Kapitalismuskritik” (“capitalism critique”) – is the result of a surprising lack of political imagination, a lot of disappointed social democrats, an important regional election in May, and the lack of a referendum about the European Constitution that would serve to channel the electorate’s fears, as it just happens in France.

Despite the fact that almost everyone, including business professors, in Germany – just as everywhere else – agrees at least theoretically, that there are issues to be debated with respect to the way our economy works, including obvious CEOcratic excesses, the political participants don’t seem to be able to update their class-struggle vocabulary to the needs of the 21st century. While I always thought “the left” had won a conceptional edge over so-called free-market fetishists by accepting that markets are “one coordinational mechanism among others”, I’m not sure about that anymore after having to endure the conflicting and confusing use of so many economic terms by leading German Social Democrats.

Thus, I suppose it was a good idea of the German government to invite Jeremy Rifkin to talk about his ideas concerning the future, or rather the end of work as we know it.
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