Dann ist die Kacke am dampfen! (Then the shit will really hit the fan!)

If you ask to a group of politicians to design a horse you will end up with something like a camel. This is not true only for Italian politicians but for German politicians too, in spite of their fastidious lecturing pose.

Look for instance at the Willy Brandt International Airport in Berlin, after 4 target dates for the opening which were missed – the latest one is October 2013 – now the people in charge of this mess are even refusing to set a new date. There are several examples of German inefficiency to quote here. For instance it appears that officials could not figure out how to switch off the lights in the main building after switching them on. This seems to be due to a computer control system too complicated for any man to handle. So thousand of bulbs are lighting the place, day and night. There is a train connecting the city to the airport that must run every day, empty, to avoid the eight kilometers track getting rusted. Then several escalators need to be replaced because they were ordered too short or too long. Last but not least aviation experts warn that when this airport will be completed it will be too small to handle the traffic. It was designed to handle 27 million passengers a year, but last year the two city airports handled already 25 million passengers. It was estimated to cost around 2 billion euro, now after so many delays the cost  has soared to about 5 billion euro. This is not a problem for a country which can borrow money at zero interest rate and with banks always ready to help politicians, especially when general elections get close. The German banking system is not only murky and messy but also State controlled. Yes, by politicians! There is a widespread misconception in Europe about German banks, believed to be very efficient and profitable. But the contrary may be true, and this could turn up to be the greatest Ponzi’s scheme in human history.

I remember talking to an Italian manager of Unicredit, after their taking over of Germany’s Hvb. He told me that it was impossible to describe the level of stupidity going on at the top managerial level of that bank. Not difficult to believe his words as was well known that Hvb was a wrack of a bank. This esplain why  they sold it to Italians. If it was a good institution, Germany would have never agree to sell it. Germany has about 2000 banks, 1.100 are cooperative banks, 450 are cooperative city banks and 10 are State owned. Basically the German banking system is public, meaning owned and controlled by the Government. There are only two big private banks. Deutsche Bank, which is under investigation in the US for not having disclosed 12 billion derivative losses and in a clear breach of Basel III agreements on other matters which we’ll not discuss here. The other is Commerz Bank, which is also partially controlled by the Government after it nearly went belly up a few years ago. The German government injected 35 billion euro in it. Since then Germany has set up the Soffin Fund to bail out banks, a found that controls 450 billion euro and which is constantly very busy forking out money.

German politicians, German bankers, seem to be in control of the EC. An explosive mix indeed that should worry everybody in Europe, including German citizens. After having financed the reunification of East Germany with money drained by raising interest rates to attract fresh capital from the rest of Europe, they are now taking the high moral ground with countries like Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy. There is nothing to laugh about this situation, because it could trigger a financial tsunami that will push us back to the Stone Age.