Warum auch der nächste Euro-Krisengipfel keine dauerhafte Lösung bringt, habe ich im Radio- und Fernsehprogramm der australischen ABC erklärt. Und im SBS Radio gibt es das alles auch noch einmal auf Deutsch.

Update: Und heute Morgen noch einmal im ABC-Frühstücksfernsehen.

Und noch ein Update: Nachdem der Gipfel nun endlich geschafft ist, hier eine erste Einschätzung bei ABC News 24.

(Ideas@TheCentre, 21 October 2011)

The Occupy Wall Street movement has polarised public opinion: Either you regard the protestors as the new political avant-garde or as just plain silly. Either you believe they have a serious message or you think they are a bunch of nutters.

But what if the truth is a bit more nuanced than that? Perhaps the nutters have a point?

The silly stuff first: The protesters seem rather confused about what they are protesting against. They camp at Wall Street, which is fair enough if you want to object to financial capitalism. But they also protested in front of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the European Central Bank – not the usual suspects for financial excess.

It is also difficult to overlook some nasty anti-Semitic undertones in the rallies. One placard in Martin …

Once again the world is impatiently awaiting a European summit at which once and for all the continent’s problems will be comprehensively solved – or not. If history is anything to go by, we should not set our hopes too high. For modern Greece there has never been a lasting solution.

You may agree or disagree with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s deterministic world view, but it is hard to argue with the philosopher’s grim assessment of governments’ ability to learn: “What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.”

Since these words were written 180 years ago Europe’s dealings with Greece have proved Hegel right time and again. Greece is not a country with temporary economic, fiscal and monetary problems. It is a permanent basket …

For once Britain can be happy that there is the euro. As without all the discussions about Europe’s ailing currency, we would now be talking about the next sterling crisis.

As eurozone countries were once again engaged in a new round of emergency negotiations over Greece, bank recapitalisations and an extension to the EFSF rescue fund, the latest round of quantitative easing in the UK went almost unnoticed outside Britain.

The lack of international attention is despite the fact that a further £75 billion have now increased the total amount of Britain’s virtual money printing exercise to £275 billion. What’s more, it is possible (if not likely) that the Bank of England will continue this policy to much higher levels.

The EFSF extension is too small to make a difference and it comes too late to calm the markets. But the debate made it abundantly clear that Germany is not prepared to go any further in saving the euro – neither through fiscal nor monetary measures.

Merkel was spared the humiliation of losing the support of her own coalition in the EFSF vote. In the end, only fifteen parliamentarians from the parties forming her government voted against the package. However, this was due to exerting enormous pressure on MPs. Merkel may have also benefitted from an embarrassing level of ignorance about the package. Many lawmakers simply did not know what they were voting on.

Warum erscheinen die besten Kommentare zur EFSF-Bundestagsdebatte eigentlich meistens im Londoner Daily Telegraph?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: The dangerous subversion of Germany’s democracy

... Markets appear to be acting on the firm belief that he [Schäuble] is lying to lawmakers, that there is indeed a secret plan, that it will be implemented once the inconvenience of the Bundestag’s vote on the EFSF tomorrow is safely out of the way, and that German democracy is being cynically subverted. The markets may or may not right about this. Mr Schäuble has a habit of promising one thing in Brussels and stating another in Berlin. But it is surely an unhealthy state of affairs. ...

As for the assurances of Mr Schäuble, either he really is lying, in which case there will be all Hell to pay in the Bundestag, and most likely a massive political backlash that will …

Aus dem Blog inCISe: http://www.incise.org.au/2011-09-28/the-wrong-man-with-the-right-answers/

It is not the first time that BBC News interviewed the wrong man. In 2006, a job applicant at the BBC suddenly found himself on live television after he had been mistaken for an expert on online music. It was a mistake, but it was actually quite charming how the presenter and her interviewee tried their best to save an embarrassing situation on air.

The latest BBC mistake is different. BBC News 24 had invited self-declared financial expert Alessio Rastani to give his verdict on the crisis management of the eurozone. Rastani didn’t mince his words, as you can watch here.

As the London Daily Telegraph revealed, Rastani is not quite what he pretended to be. He is not a professional …

Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 2011:

… As a result of this demographic shift, Cologne needed to build more houses. In 2000, there were 518,530 dwellings. Nine years later this had increased to 537,666. To deal with a population increase of just 0.1 per cent over nine years, Cologne had to increase its dwelling stock by 3.7 per cent.

As the German population continues to age, this process will go on. In fact, Germany will need to build more homes even when its population falls. In the coming decades, Australia’s experience will be the same. ...

Hier weiterlesen.