8/13/2020

Headline, August 14 2020/ ''' GERMANY : ''ANGELA MERKEL'' GREATEST '''


''' GERMANY : ''ANGELA MERKEL'' GREATEST '''




WHICH COUNTRY WILL TRIUMPH after the pandemic? Hint : It's not the U.S. or China. Which nations will flourish in this reshaped economic landscape?

The strengths Germany is showing is likely to take it from great to greater.
The winner is likely to be Germany.  Its response to the pandemic has highlighted pre-existing strengths :

Efficient government, low debt, a reputation for industrial excellence that protects its exports even as global trade falls, and a growing capacity to create domestic companies in a world dominated by American and Chinese internet giants.

While other countries worry that recent layoffs may become permanent, most German workers stayed on the payroll thanks to rapid expansion of Kurzarbeit, a century-old government system that pays companies to retain employees on shortened hours through temporary crises.

Germany was able to expand the Kurzarbeit - and much else in the way of social services - thanks to its famous frugality. During the long years when Ms. Merkel was pressing austerity on fellow European Union members, they lampooned her as a ''Swabian housewife,'' an archetype of the thrifty German who saves stale bread for dumplings. they aren't laughing now.

Because Germany went into the pandemic with a government surplus, it could support its locked-down economy with direct payments to families, tax cuts, business loans and other aid amounting to 56 percent of gross domestic product, or roughly four times more than the United States rescue package as a share of GDP.

It was also able and willing, for the first time, provide emergency stimulus funds to neighboring countries that have long complained that German stinginess hurt the entire continent.

The move was shrewd as well as generous : Those countries are now better able to afford German exports than they would have been.

Yet Germany is not dropping its commitment to balanced budgets. Since much of this spending will be drawn from savings, Germany's public debt is expected to rise, but only to 82 percent of the G.D.P. - a much lighter deb burden than that of the United States and other highly developed countries, which are spending far less on economic rescue packages.

Doubters say that Germany is now dangerously reliant on industrial exports, particularly to China, in a time of slowing global trade.
Well aware of these vulnerabilities, Germany is pushing to modernize its leading exporters, the big car companies. Through regulations and public shaming, it is pressuring the carmakers to turn from the still highly profitable combustion engine to the electric cars of the future.

Stuttgart, home to Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, has banned older diesel motors within city limits.

Germany is also making a big if somewhat belated push to become a more competitive tech power. It devotes as much to research as to development as the United States does [around 3 percent of GDP] and has a long-term plan to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem akin to Silicon valley, in which venture capitalists fuel promising start-ups.

Germany's technology industry is not without its setbacks, such as the recent and sudden collapse of the financial technology Wirecard, which has raised questions about the vigilance of Germany's financial regulator. But many of the industry's first successes, copies of American online shopping and food-delivery companies, are scaling up rapidly.

The German economic rescue plan includes $56 billion for start-ups that can digitize traditional industries, using artificial intelligence and other new technologies.

Alongside France, Germany recently announced what its economic minister called a ''moonshot,''  which aims to create a European Internet cloud to rivals those of America and China.

Germany is an aging, conservative society, but critics who assume it is too slow to change have been proved wrong before. In the early 2000s, when Germany was dismissed as the proverbial ''sick man of Europe,'' it adopted labor market reforms that restored its status as the continent's most stable economy.

As the pandemic accelerates the pace of digitization and de-globalization and drives up the world's debts, Germany stands out for its relative lack of weakness to those challenges, and for a government prepared to handle them.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Post Pandemic Economies, continues. The World Students Society thanks author, Richir Sharma, chief global strategist Morgan Stanley Investment.

With respectful dedication to the people of Germany, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the World. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011:

''' Post - Pang '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

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