(German) Exports soar as economy surges ahead

[pampango]

Source: The Local

Germany's powerful export machine cranked into high gear in June, official data showed on Monday, likely driving growth across much of Europe as the continent's biggest economy thundered ahead. The June trade surplus of €14.1 billion ($18.7 billion) was up 44 percent from May as exports rocketed 28.5 percent from a year earlier to €86.5 billion, close to a record high set in October 2008.

Germany, the world's second biggest exporter after China, suffered its worst post-war recession last year but has bounced back as growing economies snap up German goods.

On the imports side, the picture was even stronger - good for Germany and its European trading partners whose economies benefit in the German slipstream. Imports soared 31.7 percent to €72.4 billion, the Destatis statistics office said, the all-time record since figures were first compiled in 1950. For the first half of 2010, the trade surplus jumped 26 percent from the same period a year earlier to €74.6 billion, Destatis said.

Since then, exports have picked up markedly, in particular to Asia which puts a high value on German machine tools, autos and chemicals. "Exports are doing so well that they are helping to produce more jobs and more wages in Europe and this in turn is producing more domestic demand," Moec said.

Read more: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100809-29031.html

[hollowdweller]

1. OK somebody explain this to me

I know Germany has good wages and the social safety net is better than the US right??

So how is it they can be a leader in exports? I thought the corporations say you have to underpay your workers, dismantle your social contract and unregulate your businesses to be competitive?

[divideandconquer]

2. Germans value making things, many Americans only value making money

Sadly, Americans are more proud of how low a pay they can get someone to work for than building great products. We prefer to cheer on illegal aliens or guest workers, working for foreign companies.

Look at how so many Americans piss on the UAW and the Detroit 3. Funny how it took Italians to see the value in Chrysler and so many dumbass Americans couldn't. New Chrysler leader Marchionne sees Chrysler as a spring board for taking on Mercedes, BMW and VW/Audi/Porsche. Check out the spy photographs of the new Chrysler, it looks and is built like a great Mercedes.
<http://www.autoblog.com/photos/spy-shots-2012-chrysler-300/#3246983>

[burrowowl]

3. Y0u got that right!

Since Raygun our manuaturing sector has been going down the drain and the financial sector has been screwing the people and amassing the wealth to themselves. And for god's sake we are buying solar panels from China!

[Mnpaul]

7. Under Reagan

we went from the largest exporter of manufactered goods to the largest importer. Under Reagan we also went from the largest lender to the largest borrower.

Reaganomics don't work. I wish the cons would figure this out.

[boppers]

13. How many times have the UAW gone on strike over making crappy product?

Your subject line says it all, really, and it's often just as true in the board room as it is on the shop floor. The net effect is that entire professions once dominated by craftsmen are now replaceable by barely-trained labor, who can turn out product that matches the very loose quality standards of american labor.

[divideandconquer]

24. In Japan the Japanese car union complained about the poor quality of the latest Toyota's

Toyota didn't listen and only hired more "guest workers"

[primavera]

16. Illegal aliens are a drop in the bucket

There is division of opinion amongst economists about whether or not illegal aliens generate enough secondary economy activity to compensate for the jobs they work that American workers might or might not otherwise work, but there is broad consensus that, if they do have an adverse impact upon wages and job availability, it's fairly small. What, on the other hand, is decidedly not small, is the impact of outsourcing. In the case of outsourcing, all secondary economic activity and taxes generated by the business go to the receiving country. What is also not small is the impact of unfair trade with countries that have no labor or environmental protection laws. Also far from negligible in its effect is the fact that we have allowed income inequality to reach a stage where 80% of the country's wealth is owned by the richest 10% of the population, leaving the remaining 90% of the population to struggle to get by on only 20% of their country's actual wealth. From these economic wounds, we are gushing blood by the gallon, yet Americans ignore those and focus their attention on the minor hangnail that is illegal immigration. It's your funeral, dude, but I'd suggest you worry more about the gaping wounds than the hangnail.

[YOY]

11. Others mention various items. One key factor: No MIC to constantly feed with the "Defense Budget"

n/t

[primavera]

14. Germany invests in infrastructure

Executive compensation is taxed to the point of being effectively capped through taxes, so profits get channeled back into the company as opposed to going to buy lear jets and yachts for billionaire CEOs. Also, most German companies are bank financed by the German National Bank, as opposed to being privately funded through stock. As a consequence, German businesses don't have to worry about their investors dumping their stock if they fail to produce massive short term yields. The only one a German company is beholden to is the bank, to which it owes no more than its basic P&I payments, so it can take a lean year in which they make some major investment in their business. Here, if the business doesn't provide 25% or better return on investment every year, the stockholders dump the stock and buy stock from those companies that turn the fastest buck.

And, of course, their commie pinko government does things like invest in education, roads, transportation, communications, and all of the other things that we would rather chew broken glass than support in this country.

[closeupready]

20. Their products are unbelievably solid and very high quality.

For the same price or even a little more, I would always buy a German product over products from just about any other country except the US, as I try to buy US when possible (unless the product is garbage).

[Blue_Tires]

23. it also helps that they build their own stuff with their own factories and workers

instead of massive off-shoring...

[safeinOhio]

4. As I recall the Germans are the 2nd

leading lending nation behind China and we are the largest debtor nation.

Damn Western Socialist countries.:sarcasm:

Oh, and don't forget the strong unions there. Auto plants even have beer machines in them as well as more vacation time and shorter work week.

[JHB]

5. Ironically, you can thank Americans for that...

...Democrats, even, given the hand New Dealers had in shaping its postwar constitution.

[ozone_man]

6. We can't learn from our own lessons.

Our present, savage form of capitalism prevents that.

[RainDog]

12. Democrats tried to bring the U.S. into the modern world, too

but the right wingers here conflated democratic socialism with communism and effectively killed America's future. The sad irony, of course, is that America, instead, choose to put its money into weapons and a cold war, a Korean War, a Vietnam War, death squads in Latin America, an Iraq war, invasions of little islands like Panama and Grenada, funding of the Taliban, a war in Afghanistan and another war in Iraq.

Whose money has been better spent?

[Ghost Dog]

17. "A good house for all Germans.”

The idea for the creation of the Basic Law came originally from the three western occupying powers. In view of the Nazi usurpation of Germany's prewar Weimar Constitution, they made their approval of the creation of a new German state conditional on

* A complete rejection of the ideology that the German people are a master race (German: Herrenrasse) superior to others and entitled to commit genocide, or to treat barbarically those not belonging to it;
* An unequivocal commitment to the inviolability and inalienability of human rights.

The draft was prepared at the Herrenchiemsee convention (10 - 23 August 1948) on the Herreninsel in the Chiemsee, a lake in southeastern Bavaria. The delegates at the Convention were appointed by the leaders of the newly formed Länder (states). After being passed by the Parliamentary Council assembled at the Museum Koenig in Bonn on 8 May 1949 — the Museum was the only intact building in Bonn large enough to house the assembly — and after being approved by the occupying powers on 12 May 1949, it was ratified by the parliaments of all the Länder with the exception of Bavaria (Bayern). The Landtag of Bavaria rejected the Basic Law mainly because it was seen as not granting sufficient powers to the individual Länder, but at the same time decided that it would still come into force in Bavaria if two-thirds of the other Länder ratified it. <3> On 23 May 1949, the German Basic Law was promulgated and came into force a day later. The time of legal nonentity ended, as the new West German state, the Federal Republic of Germany, came into being.

...

Basic rights are fundamental to the Basic Law, in contrast to the Weimar Constitution, which listed them merely as "state objectives." Pursuant to the mandate to respect human dignity, all state power is directly bound to guarantee these basic rights. Article 1 of the Basic Law (in German legal shorthand GG, for Grundgesetz), which establishes this principle that "human dignity is inviolable" and that human rights are directly applicable law, as well as the general principles of the state in Article 20 GG, which guarantees democracy, republicanism, social responsibility, federalism, and the right of resistance should anybody undertake to abolish this order, remain under the guarantee of perpetuity stated in Article 79 Paragraph 3, i.e., those two cannot be changed even if the normal amendment process is followed.

There are no emergency powers such as those used by the Reichspräsident in the Reichstag Fire Decree of 1933 to suspend basic rights and to remove communist members of the Reichstag from power, an important step for Hitler's Machtergreifung. The suspension of human rights would also be illegal under Articles 20 and 79 GG, as above.

/... http://wapedia.mobi/en/Basic_Law_%28Germany%29

Wouldn't it be nice to see the same pre-conditions, especially the first, strictly applied in the USA too?

[Salander]

8. Does Germany reimburse us for the cost of all the troops we have there?

[Canuckistanian]

9. Oh, sure

They send a case of Blutwurst to the White House every year, according to the agreement.

[eridani]

18. Why? What are they doing for Germans? n/t

[pampango]

19. From what I know, we don't pay rent for the bases and they help pay for construction/improvements,

but that is all. They don't actually pay for the costs of foreign troops being there.

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?156725-Does-USA-pay-for-military-bases-in-Germany

Someone else may know more about this. :)

[Salander]

21. Thanx!

[applegrove]

10. Wingnuts use to use the example of Germany as an liberal economy that had high

unemployment...because it was a liberal country (which wasn't true..germany had high unemployment because of amalgamation with eastern germany, immigration & refugees from the middle east and the former soviet satellite countries). They can't use it as an example of a bad liberal economy now. But I bet it has dropped off as a topic of interest so they'll never hear about it.

[depakid]

15. Been seeing more than a few of these around:

Haven't pulled a bogged one out the sand or mud yet, but looking forward to it.

:evilgrin:

[Lightning Count]

22. Didn't Germany recently issue a couple of major economic reforms? nt

[muntrv]

25. The Germans actually make stuff in their OWN COUNTRY.