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Blut
Sep 11, 2009

if someone is in the bottom 10%~ of a guillotine
Given yields are negative on German bonds now can one of you Germans explain why your government won't just issue lots of them? Investors are literally paying you to hold their money - I don't understand how there can be any argument against taking them up on this.

Surely this "free" money could be used to improve infrastructure etc?

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Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy
Most German infrastructure is pretty deece, though obviously they should actually step up to the whole renewable thing after they went and closed all their nukes and replaced most of that poo poo with natgas/coal. lol

Otoh https://twitter.com/MKarnitschnig/status/1165907518125748225

:v:

Randler
Jan 3, 2013

ACER ET VEHEMENS BONAVIS

Blut posted:

Given yields are negative on German bonds now can one of you Germans explain why your government won't just issue lots of them?

Because EU law as well as the German constitution place limits on government deficits and on neither level a necessary political majority exists for the abolishment of those rules restricting deficits.

And yes, it still is debt even with negative yields.

GABA ghoul
Oct 29, 2011

Blut posted:

Given yields are negative on German bonds now can one of you Germans explain why your government won't just issue lots of them? Investors are literally paying you to hold their money - I don't understand how there can be any argument against taking them up on this.

Surely this "free" money could be used to improve infrastructure etc?

Wait, what? You mean like the German federal government should run a for-profit banking business? I dunno, that sounds like a really bad idea. I don't think they gonna be more competitive than a regular bank.

If you are asking why Germany doesn't do more deficit spending. The Merkel government is opposed to it and has committed to a balanced budget in the coalition agreement. Also, lmao, it's now in the constitution so they need to change the constitution even if they wanted to. If you are asking why it's like that, the explanation is brain damage from leaded gasoline exposure in the 50s-80s.

mortons stork
Oct 13, 2012

Opferwurst posted:

QE is extremely unpopular in Germany. Yields for German bonds are all negative nowadays. Media openly calls it expropriation by the EU. The conspiracy nutjobs on youtube are already calling for open revolution(probably planning to storm the ECB building, Bastille style)

Also, ECB policy has turned the already existing housing crisis into a nightmare. Germany has a low home ownership rate so regular earners are either not able to afford housing in the larger cities at all or spending up to 50% of their net income on rent.

Also, I guess pensions/savings are hosed too and since Germany is 99% boomers by weight, people are pissed.

Regarding the housing crisis, I remember reading that Germany kinda sorta gave up on investing in affordable housing around 20 years ago. That correct? What are the root causes of the crisis?

SniHjen
Oct 22, 2010

This is the thing I will never understand.
The whole point of money, is that you can get things with it, and with the same principle of: If no one accept your money, then why have it?

If you can't spend the money, or won't spend the money, it's worthless.

Sulla Faex
May 14, 2010

No man ever did me so much good, or enemy so much harm, but I repaid him with ENDLESS SHITPOSTING

SniHjen posted:

This is the thing I will never understand.
The whole point of money, is that you can get things with it, and with the same principle of: If no one accept your money, then why have it?

If you can't spend the money, or won't spend the money, it's worthless.

Well.. you can also have more money than your goddamn cousin who everybody is always going on about how great they are, but look, look, you earn almost double

Dawncloack
Nov 26, 2007
ECKS DEE!
Nap Ghost
^^^ that is true as well

At the individual scale, I seem to recall (but can't find) a study that suggested that the brain, judging from scans, creates the same patterns for physical events, like being punched in the face, as for mental events, like being proved wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if the Smaug-level hoarding is just humans falling into a cognitive trap of "my checking account number went up and gave me a shot of endorphins. That means it's an absolute good in the universe right?"

(On second thought I might be thinking of an Adam ruins everything sketch)

On the social scale, that's capitalism.

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


SniHjen posted:

This is the thing I will never understand.
The whole point of money, is that you can get things with it, and with the same principle of: If no one accept your money, then why have it?

If you can't spend the money, or won't spend the money, it's worthless.

To quote Mark Blythe quoting someone else; 'money is a hedge against uncertainty' - you keep it around and hoard it because if things turn to poo poo tomorrow, next year, whenever, you can still get tins of beans with it. The only obstacle is, as you say, what if no-one accepts it anymore?

Although, at that point our societies will have bigger problems than who's got the bigger pile of coloured paper.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Blut posted:

Given yields are negative on German bonds now can one of you Germans explain why your government won't just issue lots of them? Investors are literally paying you to hold their money - I don't understand how there can be any argument against taking them up on this.

Surely this "free" money could be used to improve infrastructure etc?

Eh, it's not free. If you borrow 100% with a 3% negative yield that just means you're paying back 97% when the coupon runs out. Not 0%.

But yeah there is no reason not to invest with bonds. The need for infrastructure, power generation and housing is dire and institutional investors are starving for state bonds.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

MiddleOne posted:

Eh, it's not free. If you borrow 100% with a 3% negative yield that just means you're paying back 97% when the coupon runs out. Not 0%.

But yeah there is no reason not to invest with bonds. The need for infrastructure, power generation and housing is dire and institutional investors are starving for state bonds.

That's literally more than free though.

If I borrow at 0% interest, that's free money, in that using that capital for whatever ends I required it for is not costing me any money. And that's not even taking into account the time value of money.

Negative interest means someone is paying me to use their money.

Germany could literally take out a massive loan at 3% negative yield, keep all that money on a government bank account and do absolutely nothing with it until the principal comes due and pay it back and they'd have reduced their national debt.

Any state which can get a negative yield should be borrowing like mad. Not taking action on such a deal when offered is completely loving insane.

Honj Steak
May 31, 2013

Hi there.
A huge amount of older Germans are immensely stingy and anxiety-ridden. I don’t know the exact psychological reasons for that, but I know several elderly people who spend quite some time every day to check local supermarket ads to be sure where their yoghurt is the cheapest this week. Also some people who hoard food on an apocalyptic scale.

Honj Steak fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Aug 27, 2019

Randler
Jan 3, 2013

ACER ET VEHEMENS BONAVIS
Mixing German people having high saving rates and the German government being unwilling to do necessary investments is the same "Household budgets are like Public budgets" bullshit neoliberals push, just from the other side. :colbert:

If you want people to spend more money, you need to make the government spend more money to prop up the economy not the other way around.

Orange Devil posted:

That's literally more than free though.

If I borrow at 0% interest, that's free money, in that using that capital for whatever ends I required it for is not costing me any money. And that's not even taking into account the time value of money.

Negative interest means someone is paying me to use their money.

Germany could literally take out a massive loan at 3% negative yield, keep all that money on a government bank account and do absolutely nothing with it until the principal comes due and pay it back and they'd have reduced their national debt.

Any state which can get a negative yield should be borrowing like mad. Not taking action on such a deal when offered is completely loving insane.

The problem with that approach is, however, that currently there is not enough demand for those negative yield bonds. With Germany being unable to sell all of their bonds being auctioned last week. (Link to paywall, use Incognito mode)

quote:

The country only sold 824 million euros of the zero coupon bond at a record-low average yield of -0.11%, while the Bundesbank retained nearly two-thirds of the debt on offer. The real subscription rate -- a gauge of demand that accounts for retentions by the Bundesbank -- fell to 0.43 times against 0.86 times at the previous sale of similar maturity bonds on July 17.

Randler fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Aug 27, 2019

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Money hoarding is an addiction. It's crackheads ripping out the copper to sell for crack, but it's public infrastructure.

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


Randler posted:

Mixing German people having high saving rates and the German government being unwilling to do necessary investments is the same "Household budgets are like Public budgets" bullshit neoliberals push, just from the other side. :colbert:

Entirely correct, but it's also not incorrect to say that the Germans have a weird overall mentality of saving above all else, as well as a schwarze null obsession.

I hope that this is not shared by the younger generation (and giving voting patterns, I don't think it is?), but it's not exactly something this thread made up from nothing.

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

eh if the government is afraid of inflation (as germany seems to be, curiously) maintaining spending discipline makes a lot of sense regardless of bond yields

still the debt dogma in europe and especially germany is strange and disquieting

Honj Steak
May 31, 2013

Hi there.

Junior G-man posted:

Entirely correct, but it's also not incorrect to say that the Germans have a weird overall mentality of saving above all else, as well as a schwarze null obsession.

I hope that this is not shared by the younger generation (and giving voting patterns, I don't think it is?), but it's not exactly something this thread made up from nothing.

Well there is one demographic in this country that knows that hoarding money is useless and they spend all of it on precious metals :v:

No. 1 Callie Fan
Feb 17, 2011

This inkling is your FRIEND
She fights for LOVE
Hoarding money? Guess some people haven't shaken off their mercantilist reflexes. :v:

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

V. Illych L. posted:

eh if the government is afraid of inflation (as germany seems to be, curiously)

I mean I know it's been a while, but Germany does have a bit of a traumatic history in that regard...

His Divine Shadow
Aug 7, 2000

I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.
I realize I have a lot in common with the germans. I save and I save and I am always careful to not spend extra money. I have several months worth of pay checks in my personal account, just as a security buffer. I put away a little in index fund every month as well, and in the family shared account we have as much again. I've infected my SO over the years and she probably save as much. We're also saving for the children. I think we're doing pretty well given we're not high income earners, feels good man.

I dunno on a personal level I think being frugal and saving is fine. The state though, they need to spend more. They aren't a family, different rules apply.

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


Yeah but that's all fine and cool, that's being a reasonably responsible adult and a good parent.

No-one itt is saying don't save anything and just go hog-wild, we're specifically saying that German retired boomers with pensions who still save on that pension because they think they'll live forever need to actually hand some of that surplus over to their kids to buy a fridge with, or should be eaten by labour so we can convert their dead capital into something useful.

Honj Steak posted:

Well there is one demographic in this country that knows that hoarding money is useless and they spend all of it on precious metals :v:

Gold is just a shiny rock that's only any good because we've developed a long-standing social obsession with it. I doubt many people actually stuff gold bars in their mattress anymore, they probably own shares in a gold-holding company or something.

You still need to convert any gold you actually own (or shares thereof) into actual bits of paper, unless you've got a very libertarian butcher and supermarket that will accept precious metals in exchange for sausages and kale.

Junior G-man fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Aug 27, 2019

GABA ghoul
Oct 29, 2011

V. Illych L. posted:

still the debt dogma in europe and especially germany is strange and disquieting

It's hosed up. Reading any newspaper comments section on the topic is like stepping into an anti-vaxxer forum. I don't know what is wrong with this country but I genuinely suspect it's the leaded gasoline.

Also, the way I understand it the negative yield isn't really that special. You get the same effect every time inflation is above the interest rate. Like, if Germany was to sell a 1y 1% bond but inflation for that year was 10% you would effectively had a negative yield happening.

e: same goes for all the Boomer knuckle draggers complaining about low interest.and how the ECB has declared war on the German people. No, this happens all the time. Each time inflation is above the 0.1% interest on your lovely savings account you get a negative yield

GABA ghoul fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Aug 27, 2019

Blut
Sep 11, 2009

if someone is in the bottom 10%~ of a guillotine

Orange Devil posted:

That's literally more than free though.

If I borrow at 0% interest, that's free money, in that using that capital for whatever ends I required it for is not costing me any money. And that's not even taking into account the time value of money.

Negative interest means someone is paying me to use their money.

Germany could literally take out a massive loan at 3% negative yield, keep all that money on a government bank account and do absolutely nothing with it until the principal comes due and pay it back and they'd have reduced their national debt.

Any state which can get a negative yield should be borrowing like mad. Not taking action on such a deal when offered is completely loving insane.

This is exactly what I was thinking. At a time when the German economy is slowing down, and possibly entering a recession, having the option of issuing negative yield bonds seems like the perfect way to generate funding for infrastructure (in particular "green new deal" type stuff) and housing - which would hopefully push the economy back to growth (and generally improve the country massively). Green new deal stuff is also something very much better done sooner rather than later. The schwarze null obsession seemingly overriding this logic for Merkel just boggles my mind.

I wasn't aware the last issuance didn't sell fully though, thanks Randler. If they sold €824mn at -0.11% for 30 year bonds, then there still is probably demand in the market for more bonds in less negative territory (even if its only -0.01% its still a "profit") though. Especially if they're shorter term ones.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Orange Devil posted:

That's literally more than free though.

If I borrow at 0% interest, that's free money, in that using that capital for whatever ends I required it for is not costing me any money. And that's not even taking into account the time value of money.

Negative interest means someone is paying me to use their money.

Germany could literally take out a massive loan at 3% negative yield, keep all that money on a government bank account and do absolutely nothing with it until the principal comes due and pay it back and they'd have reduced their national debt.

Any state which can get a negative yield should be borrowing like mad. Not taking action on such a deal when offered is completely loving insane.

I don't know who you're arguing with except your own semantic intepretation of what I meant by free. The negative bond yield is free (as in you could just hold the cash and still earn it), the money itself not (if you invest it poorly you still have to pay back the 97% at the end). Free money would be a perpetual bond with 0% yield. I was just reinforcing the idea that the money still has to be used responsively because even when you're paid to take the loan, as you are when the yield is negative, a loan is still a loan at the end of the day.

And to clarify, by responsively I mean productively. Less burying bearer bonds and more building useful stuff for society that increases productivity and quality of life. What Germany is doing is the polar opposite of responsible bond politics. It forces institutional investors into risky assets, inflates asset values and long-term hurts the very foundation of the economy.

MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Aug 27, 2019

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

feedmegin posted:

I mean I know it's been a while, but Germany does have a bit of a traumatic history in that regard...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic

quote:

Hyperinflation affected the German Papiermark, the currency of the Weimar Republic, between 1921 and 1923.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_German_federal_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1924_German_federal_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_1924_German_federal_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_German_federal_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic#Br%C3%BCning%27s_policy_of_deflation_(1930%E2%80%931932)

quote:

Between 1930 and 1932, Brüning tried to reform the Weimar Republic without a parliamentary majority, governing, when necessary, through the President's emergency decrees. In line with the contemporary economic theory (subsequently termed "leave-it-alone liquidationism"), he enacted a draconian policy of deflation and drastically cutting state expenditure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930_German_federal_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1932_German_federal_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election

One could think the Germans would be more traumatized of deflation than of inflation, given how inflation only resulted in SPD victories while deflation resulted in Nazism; however German economic doxa is still "deflation good because it brings fascists to power and we love fascists; inflation bad because it brings socialists to power and we have socialists".

Anyone who wants austerity actually wants fascism. Austerity is the machine created to bring fascism into the world. Fascism is always the objective of austerity policies.

Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Aug 27, 2019

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Randler posted:

The problem with that approach is, however, that currently there is not enough demand for those negative yield bonds. With Germany being unable to sell all of their bonds being auctioned last week. (Link to paywall, use Incognito mode)

If you can't sell negative yield bonds then clearly your bond yield isn't actually negative.


Ghost Leviathan posted:

Money hoarding is an addiction. It's crackheads ripping out the copper to sell for crack, but it's public infrastructure.


No that's literally what liberal privatisation schemes are.


MiddleOne posted:

I don't know who you're arguing with except your own semantic intepretation of what I meant by free. The negative bond yield is free (as in you could just hold the cash and still earn it), the money itself not (if you invest it poorly you still have to pay back the 97% at the end). Free money would be a perpetual bond with 0% yield. I was just reinforcing the idea that the money still has to be used responsively because even when you're paid to take the loan, as you are when the yield is negative, a loan is still a loan at the end of the day.

And to clarify, by responsively I mean productively. Less burying bearer bonds and more building useful stuff for society that increases productivity and quality of life. What Germany is doing is the polar opposite of responsible bond politics. It forces institutional investors into risky assets, inflates asset values and long-term hurts the very foundation of the economy.

The German government could spend it on hookers and blow and then pay it back through taxes and they'd have net improved their country as long as the hookers and blow are (produced by) the German poor and the taxes go on the rich.


My point is that in the entire history of the country of Germany it has never been cheaper for its government to do things that make the lives of its citizens better. And its government refuses to do it. Whoever said it's treasonous is absolutely correct.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Aug 27, 2019

GABA ghoul
Oct 29, 2011

Blut posted:

This is exactly what I was thinking. At a time when the German economy is slowing down, and possibly entering a recession, having the option of issuing negative yield bonds seems like the perfect way to generate funding for infrastructure (in particular "green new deal" type stuff) and housing - which would hopefully push the economy back to growth (and generally improve the country massively). Green new deal stuff is also something very much better done sooner rather than later. The schwarze null obsession seemingly overriding this logic for Merkel just boggles my mind.

It isn't that simple though. The slow down in the expansion of renewables isn't due to lack of capital but due to NIMBYism and lack of political will. The free market is already willing to provide as much capital as needed for capacity and grid expansion. But they can't spend the money.

Infrastructure and housing spending has its problems too. The construction industry is running at capacity and dealing with labor shortages. Lots of cities can't even spend the money they already have and wouldn't be able to do anything with more. Some cities famously have schools that are literally falling apart(bricks and walls coming down on the kids and flooded/moldy class rooms) but can't get their poo poo together to renovate them. More money is not gonna help.

(I'm not saying deficit spend is a bad idea, just that with the current situation you would hit deminishing returns very, very fast. Parts of Germany are at full employment. The heavily downsized public sector doesn't have the capacity to plan and manage so many projects. Expanding the public sector is difficult due to the labor shortages.)

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Cat Mattress posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic

One could think the Germans would be more traumatized of deflation than of inflation, given how inflation only resulted in SPD victories while deflation resulted in Nazism; however German economic doxa is still "deflation good because it brings fascists to power and we love fascists; inflation bad because it brings socialists to power and we have socialists".

This is entirely correct. It's a massive misconception that hyperinflation lead to the Nazi's. My favorite example of this in the wild is the Caen war museum, which I do recommend everyone visit, it's a great WW2 museum, but the lead-up to war part has a wall where on the text they have written out the story everyone gets taught in school "hyperinflation caused massive unemployment and this economic anxiety drove voters into the arms of the Nazi's" while on the very same wall they show exhibits with dates on them that completely disproves this whole story. I had to bite my lip not to interrupt the tour guide going through with a school class and asking her about the discrepancies but I didn't see that ending with everyone clapping while a bear who happened to be Albert Einstein became a marine or whatever so I let it go.


I wrote my bachelor's thesis on accounting during hyperinflation including Germany in the 20s as one of the cases studied so let me go through a cliffs notes:

Hyperinflation is qualitatively completely different from inflation. High inflation does not cause hyperinflation. Usually hyperinflation is caused by a total loss of confidence by a population in the value of a currency. A major source of value of a currency is that your government demands you pay it taxes in that currency under threat of force. If a government is no longer able to credibly threaten that force or collect those taxes or deliberately (and usually repeatedly) devalues the currency such that you holding this currency no longer gives you the security of knowing you'll be able to pay the taxes you'll need to pay then that might very well lead to hyperinflation. The most common one weird trick to fix hyperinflation is to discontinue the hyperinflated currency and issue a new one. And you run whatever confidence scam you need to to convince the average Joe Schmoe in the street that this one will be stable (seriously, this part is like 90% psychology and 10% economics).

In the case of Germany, hyperinflation was a deliberate policy by the Weimar government in response to the reparations payments, which they had to make in foreign cash. So they started buying cash at any price and just printing however many marks required to get it done. And that still wasn't enough, so then the French and the Belgians occupied the Ruhr (aka industrial heart of Germany, especially at the time) and the Weimar government told the workers to go on a general strike and printed even more money to keep paying the striking workers. By the end of the early 20s, the Weimar government has issued a new currency and hyperinflation went away. Important sidenote, chief concern for the revaluation of this new currency was the interests of creditors and debtors over say, cost of living. So big shock, workers got hosed to protect the interests of the monied classes.

Anyway, after a lot (seriously) of quibbling the allies agree to implement the Dawes plan which turns the reparations from economically impossible and murderous to something that can actually exist in reality. The French and Belgians leave the Ruhr, Germany incrementally pays more reparations over time through taxes partially overseen by the Allies and also the US would help Germany out through injecting a bunch of cold hard dollars funnelled through JP Morgan Chase into its economy. Things return to kinda normal, unemployment starts dropping, Dawes gets a Nobel Peace Prize and everything seems to hum along alright.

So funny little thing, the Dawes plan made the German economy highly dependent on foreign markets. Then it also paid a bunch of war reparations effectively through the US loans. And France and the UK were using the war reparations to pay off their own loans to the US they had incurred during the war. So everyone is depending massively on the US economy. And then Wall Street crashes. Oops. German economic output fell by 40%. Unemployment soared. Like people were really loving hurting. The government response? Austerity. And then guess what? Boom, Nazi's.



I just want to reiterate that deliberate hyperinflation actually helped Germany get out from the impossible situation that was the original war reparations + foreign occupation. Like, that poo poo loving worked yo. Austerity on the other hand went directly to Nazitown. Our politicians have learned from that that hyperinflation is the greatest evil in the universe and austerity is just fine, actually.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Aug 27, 2019

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Orange Devil posted:

The German government could spend it on hookers and blow and then pay it back through taxes and they'd have net improved their country as long as the hookers and blow are (produced by) the German poor and the taxes go on the rich.


My point is that in the entire history of the country of Germany it has never been cheaper for its government to do things that make the lives of its citizens better. And its government refuses to do it. Whoever said it's treasonous is absolutely correct.

That was as true with positive yields years ago as it is with today with negative.

Creating bonds to create consumer-service jobs would be mind-bendingly stupid.

MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Aug 27, 2019

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

MiddleOne posted:

That was as true with positive yields years ago as it is with today with negative.

True, but it's so much more egregious now.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Orange Devil posted:

True, but it's so much more egregious now.

It really isn't. ROI is still ROI. Negative yield tilts the curve, but the curve has been dominantly favourable for so long that it makes no difference. The German government needs to create money supply through fiscal policy (to consume more) and to finance public investments with the creation of state bonds. Nothing has changed, the situation might be more dire but it was just as egregious before when Germany was draining the periphery like a surplus vampire.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

MiddleOne posted:

It really isn't. ROI is still ROI. Negative yield tilts the curve, but the curve has been dominantly favourable for so long that it makes no difference. The German government needs to create money supply through fiscal policy (to consume more) and to finance public investments with the creation of bonds.

Purely mathematically you are right, but I feel strongly that with actual negative yields it should be so much easier to give the argument the emotional oomph it needs to resonate with the macro-economically illiterate.

namesake
Jun 19, 2006

"When I was a girl, around 12 or 13, I had a fantasy that I'd grow up to marry Captain Scarlet, but he'd be busy fighting the Mysterons so I'd cuckold him with the sexiest people I could think of - Nigel Mansell, Pat Sharp and Mr. Blobby."

I'm still mad after Mark Blyth pointed out that gilts are governments paying the very richest in society money for the privilege of not taxing them or else they're private savings with a parasitical financial industry between the government and the saver.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008


Where did I mention the Nazis? I'm aware of the history. Hyperinflation was traumatising in and of itself - it wiped out the savings that so many middle class Germans are apparently still so keen on. Not so bad if you're working class and didn't have much money to become worthless in the first place, though, nor if you have physical assets and were rich enough to avoid having to trade them all for bread.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

namesake posted:

I'm still mad after Mark Blyth pointed out that gilts are governments paying the very richest in society money for the privilege of not taxing them or else they're private savings with a parasitical financial industry between the government and the saver.

That was Mark Blyth quoting Adam Smith almost verbatim. That was true back then but today in a post-fiat currency economy government bonds serve more purposes and the scarcity of them creates financial instability by funneling capital into private debt.

Blut
Sep 11, 2009

if someone is in the bottom 10%~ of a guillotine

Opferwurst posted:

It isn't that simple though. The slow down in the expansion of renewables isn't due to lack of capital but due to NIMBYism and lack of political will. The free market is already willing to provide as much capital as needed for capacity and grid expansion. But they can't spend the money.

Infrastructure and housing spending has its problems too. The construction industry is running at capacity and dealing with labor shortages. Lots of cities can't even spend the money they already have and wouldn't be able to do anything with more. Some cities famously have schools that are literally falling apart(bricks and walls coming down on the kids and flooded/moldy class rooms) but can't get their poo poo together to renovate them. More money is not gonna help.

(I'm not saying deficit spend is a bad idea, just that with the current situation you would hit deminishing returns very, very fast. Parts of Germany are at full employment. The heavily downsized public sector doesn't have the capacity to plan and manage so many projects. Expanding the public sector is difficult due to the labor shortages.)



12 of the 16 German states have unemployment rates over 5%. Construction is an industry with a very short lead in time for training, comparatively. "labour shortages" are pretty much entirely only in the handful of most economically successful states. Thats also not accounting for the ability to import construction workers from elsewhere in the EU, where unemployment is much higher. This seems a very poor argument against increased infrastructure spending.

But even if someone wants to run with that: given the German manufacturing sector is suffering the most at present , how about introducing a wide-scale government scrappage scheme to encourage Germans to trade in their polluting older/diesel cars for new electric ones? That would help the manufacturing sector, utilize labour where there is currently spare capacity, and help the environment.

The idea that "theres just nowhere we can spend the money!!" is a neo-liberal talking point, aimed at preventing governments from spending more money because BIG GOVERNMENT BAD. There are plenty of ways to use government spending to improve the country currently.

Blut fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Aug 27, 2019

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Blut posted:

But even if someone wants to run with that: given the German manufacturing sector is suffering the most at present , how about introducing a wide-scale Government scrappage scheme to encourage Germans to trade in their polluting older/diesel cars for new electric ones? That would help the manufacturing sector, utilize labour where there is currently spare capacity, and help the environment.

Funny story, Germany actually can't. The German auto industry is the best in the world at building not only fossil fuel cars, but the technological systems particular to fossil fuel cars. In moving to EV, Germany would lose a lot of the competitive advantages that has made its auto industry as dominant as it is. It would have to start from scratch with other auto economies already far into the game.

Thus the aggressive stalling by both German political and economical interests to obstruct the switch to EVs.

Randler
Jan 3, 2013

ACER ET VEHEMENS BONAVIS
And EU state aid rules make it extremely difficult to only help the domestic manufacturing industry instead of all their competition from abroad. Which is part of the reason why the latest incentives for electronic vehicles as well as the new depreciation scheme for newly constructed housing were deliberately limited in scope as to not require EU approval.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
I want to make two more points.

One could argue that the experience with hyperinflation was the reason the Weimar government went with austerity during the Great Depression. The capitalist classes had not taken the brunt of the hit through the hyperinflation, but they had certainly taken some hits. Austerity ofcourse is designed specifically to protect the rich. Hence also why during "the Great Recession" we simultaneously saw the number of millionaires and billionaires and their average wealth as well as multinational profits reach record highs. So in that sense I guess you could draw a line from hyperinflation to Nazi's, it just goes through "capitalism is so goddamn loving evil for real" on its way there.


Then there's also that Germany in the early 20s was actually in that mythical situation that governments love to warn about, where they just had way too goddamn much debt. Ofcourse we've already known the solution to way too goddamn much debt for like, 6.000 years. It's real easy: you cancel the debt. It's in the bible for fucks sakes. It's on the Rosetta stone. What you do is you say "actually gently caress you creditors you don't get to hold entire generations hostage for life, that poo poo is detrimental to the society I'm trying to build here and moreover I am the loving state, I have an army, come at me". In effect the US forced the UK and France to do this through the Dawes plan. Any sane US government would do this to student and healthcare loans immediately. Don't even use government money to pay that poo poo off, just cancel it with the stroke of a pen and gently caress the creditors. In conclusion, Thomas Sankara was absolutely right:

"The debt cannot be paid back, firstly because, if we don't pay, our debitors won't starve to death. Be sure of that. But if we pay, we will starve to death. Be sure of that as well."

And they loving murdered him for it.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Aug 27, 2019

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Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Blut posted:

The idea that "theres just nowhere we can spend the money!!" is a neo-liberal talking point, aimed at preventing governments from spending more money because BIG GOVERNMENT BAD. There are plenty of ways to use government spending to improve the country currently.

Such as:

Nationalize health care.

Nationalize public transport.

Nationalize power and water infrastructure.

Nationalize the loving banks.

Abolish Hartz IV and replace it with a system not literally written by steel and auto executives which aims at providing a decent standard of living rather than keeping labour costs low.

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