BARCELONA | CaixaBank research | The German proposal for an alternative Banking Union are destined to fail: mere cooperation between national authorities would not guarantee that decisions are taken in the interest of Europe’s financial system as a whole.
NEW YORK | By Ana Fuentes | The US president visited his key ally in Europe amid tensions caused by the American surveillance program, their use of German military bases for drone strikes and Obama’s disagreement with chancellor Angela Merkel on how to handle the euro crisis.
MADRID | By Luis Martí | The German government could also be drawn in as an expropriator of sorts: it is still an issuer of debt at a real yield equally negative for their nationals.
FRANKFORT | What are the ingredients of that Germany’s economic magic potion? There is one worth bearing in mind: the dismantling of the social welfare.
LONDON | By Victor Jimenez | Governments in Berlin must speak up their minds, instead of using the national judiciary system and some probable legal ambiguities to delay the urgent steps of more integration.
Angela Merkel refuses to levy tariffs of 47% on Chinese solar panel imports because she fears damaging China-Germany relations and being shut out of its market. However, in Ray Kwong’s view, Berlin is too dependent on China’s economic engine, which could crack anytime due to territorial conflicts, too-rapid expansion of credit, lax environmental oversight, widening discontent among the population and many other legitimate problems.
The Fair Observer | It is easy to say that Europeans should have more sex. Demography is destiny, after all, or so it has seemed for millennia, and what could be better than sleeping your way to world power? Despite the financial crisis, a diminishing birth rates and seemingly unsustainable welfare states, Glenn Carle believes German leadership might offer a solution for structural reform in Europe.
MADRID | By Luis Martí | AfD is in a destructive mood. They are not interested in salvaging what Europe has managed to build. Their objective is rather to pull down existing structures while looking to the past for inspiration, namely to national currencies.
MADRID | If Spain’s democracy owes something to someone it would be Germany. During Spain’s democratic transition, Christian democracy and Social Democracy German foundations sustained and alerted incipient political parties when they need it.
LONDON | Egan-Jones also blamed Chancellor Angela Merkel for her resistance against “European Union bonds and money printing” while “pushing for fiscal controls and the seniority of bailout funding.”