Germany, according to Economist

choi

The current issue of Economist has a brief on Germany. This is the preface, and brings about the most comments (99 compared with single digits for the rest).


Europe’s reluctant hegemon |  Germany, now the dominant country in Europe, needs to rethink the way it sees itself and the world, says Zanny Minton Beddoes. Economist, Jun 15th 2013.
http://www.economist.com/news/sp ... -it-sees-itself-and

Quote:

"Bureaucrats in Brussels talk ruefully about Berlin becoming the capital of Europe. 'When the German position changes on an issue, the kaleidoscope shifts as other countries line up behind them,' says one official. 'That’s unprecedented in the history of the EU.'  German predominance is not all-encompassing. In foreign affairs and military matters, for instance, France and Britain still play a much bigger role. But across a large swathe of European policy, Germany has become much more than a first among equals.

"Outside Germany this dominance has become the subject of lively debate. The 'German question'—about the role of a country too big for Europe and too small for the world, as Henry Kissinger famously put it—is back on the agenda.

"Others are worried that Germany is being too passive. Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, fears German inaction more than German power. On this view, Germany does not want, and cannot exercise, the leadership required of a predominant power. * * * William Paterson of Aston University in Birmingham[, England,] has called Germany a 'reluctant hegemon.'  Within Germany this debate is almost wholly absent. Germans are deeply ambivalent about their growing role in Europe, and generally uncomfortable talking about leadership. The mere vocabulary is fraught with historical echoes. The German world for leader is Führer, the title adopted by Adolf Hitler. Mention the word 'hegemon,' and German politicians flinch.

"The former West Germany was a semi-sovereign political pygmy, protected by America’s military might and with barely any foreign policy of its own. * * * Germany’s preferred self-image is as a bigger version of Switzerland: economically successful but politically modest.

"History’s third legacy is a craving for stability, not least because Germans have not had much of it. The 68 years since the end of the second world war have been the longest continuous period of peace in their patch of Europe since the 16th century.

"Another new poll suggests that almost seven out of ten Germans support the single currency, and the share is rising rather than falling.

"Germany is changing fast. Its population is the oldest in Europe, and the number of people of working age is about to shrink sharply. A widespread shortage of workers will drive Germany to welcome more immigrants and encourage women to spend more time on paid work, which will profoundly affect its economy and its society.

Note: German-English dictionary:
(a) wirtschaftswunder (n): "economic miracle"
* wirtschaft (noun feminine): "economy" (when wirtschafts + noun and become a single word, the former means "economic")
* wunder (noun neutral): "wonder"
(b) ordnungspolitik (noun feminine): "regulatory policy; political procedures"
* ordnung (noun feminine): "order""
* politik (noun feminine): "policy"
(c) Energiewende (noun feminine): "energy turnaround"
* wende (noun feminine): "turnaround"

choi

(2) The economy  | Dissecting the miracle; The ingredients of German economic success are more complex than they seem. Economist, June 15, 2013
http://www.economist.com/news/sp ... hey-seem-dissecting

Quote:

"This [strong export and low unemployment] is not the result of booming growth. Over the past decade Germany’s economy has on average grown more slowly than America’s and Britain’s and barely faster than that of the euro zone as a whole. But Germany managed to avoid a surge of lay-offs after the financial crisis and has done far better than others at getting the young and the hard-to-employ into work.

"Between 2001 and 2010 German wages rose by an average of just 1.1% a year in nominal terms, leaving them flat in real terms.

"German manufacturers have traditionally been strong in three big areas: machine tools, chemicals and cars. That proved a perfect combination in a decade when emerging economies were booming and China, especially, went on an investment binge. Almost half of German exports, and 72% of its exports to China, are machinery or transport goods.

Note:
(a) "THE NECKAR VALLEY, not far from Stuttgart, is the epitome of provincial Germany. A string of picturesque towns with quaint Swabian names—Tübingen (home to a famous university), Reutlingen, Nürtingen, Wendlingen, Metzingen—stretch along the river, separated by orchards and family farms and flanked by the hills of the Swabian Alb."
(i) Neckar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neckar
(a river; The name Neckar was derived from Nicarus and Neccarus from Celtic Nikros, meaning wild water or wild fellow)

View the map and see Tübingen> Nürtingen > Stuttgart by the river (in the order from upriver to downriver).
(ii) Tübingen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCbingen
(section 12 Higher education)
(A) On the Origin of the Place Name Tubingen. Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
http://kk.convdocs.org/docs/index-154813.html
("The city name Tübingen first appeared as Tuwingen in the chronicle Anno Zwifalt in the year 1078, not long after the introduction of place names in the 10th century in Southern Germany")
(B) The pamphlet was (and still is) published by the University (here is the URL:
www.uni-tuebingen.de/fileadmin/U ... mente/tubname-e.doc), but somehow the Web browser, Internet Explorer, refuses to allow access. That is why I provide an alternative URL above.

(iii) Swabia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabia
(a region; section 2.1 Suebi)
(iv) Swabian Jura
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_Jura
(German: Schwäbische Alb)
(v) Jura
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jura
("Jura mountains, mountains on the French-Swiss-German border")

(b) German surnames:
(i) Rösch: Middle High German rösch, rosch ‘quick’, ‘lively’, ‘brave’
(ii) Bosch (Dutch surname also): "from Middle Dutch bussch, meaning ‘wood’ rather than ‘bush’
(iii) Hartz: "a variant of Hardt
(iv) Schröder: "a cloth cutter or tailor, from an agent derivative of Middle Low German schroden, schraden ‘to cut’
(v) Steinmeier, where in modern times Meier is "a variant spelling of German Meyer"--in fact Meyer is derived "from Middle High German meier."
(vi) Kühne: "Middle High German küene ‘bold’
(vii) Nagel: "German Nagel ‘nail’

(c) Robert Bosch GmbH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH
(privately owned)

(d) "The external surplus [or trade surplus], at €188 billion ($243 billion), or 7% of GDP, is the world’s biggest in absolute terms, one of the biggest relative to the size of the economy, and rising.
(i) China's trade surplus in 2012 was $231bn (surged 48%), according to PRC itself.
(ii) CIA's estimation for 2012 ("2012 est"), which shows China as No 1 ($213bn), Germany No 2 (208.1), Japan No 4 (84.1), Singapore No 11 (51.4), Taiwan No 12 (40.9), Hong Kong No 28 (6.4), "Korea, South" No 34 (3.1). But these are CURRENT ACCOUNT BALANCE.
Country Comparison: Current Account Balance. CIA World Factbook (as of today).     
https://www.cia.gov/library/publ ... order/2187rank.html
("These figures are calculated on an exchange rate basis, ie, not in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms")
(A) The data is listed under the tab "REFERENCES" ("guide to country comparisons" in its pull-down menu) in the horizontal bar.
(B)  current account
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_account
(It is the sum of the balance of trade [goods and services], factor income, and cash transfers;  It is called the current account because goods and services are generally consumed in the current period)
(iii) HOWEVER, further calculation (ie, divided by population sizes) manifests a different picture

Current Account Balance. World By Map, Mar 18, 2013
http://world.bymap.org/CurrentAccountBalance.html
(Qatar ($30,011), Singapore (8,381), Saudi Arabia (5,653), Germany (2,559), Hong Kong (1,799), Taiwan (1.759), Luxembourg (982), Japan (665), S Korea (452). China (127)), whose caption is exactly the same as that of CIA World Factbook, with the addition of "Source: CIA World Factbook (2013-03-18)."

Per capita, Taiwan's trade surplus has always been multiple times as large as Japan's--for as long as I can recall.

(e) "And the system of Mitbestimmung (which gives trade unions seats on company boards) encouraged wage restraint.

German-English dictionary:
(i) mitbestimmung (noun feminine): "co-determination"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination
(ii) mit- : "joint"
(iii) bestimmung (noun feminine): "rule, determination"

(f) Please stop reading at the end of this paragraph (for there is nothing worthy of reading afterwards):

"At first sight German industry does seem stolid. Its main components—cars, chemicals, machine tools—have been the same for decades. Although Berlin has become a bit of a European digital hub, and Germany’s SAP is the world’s third-largest software company, the country has no Apple, Facebook or any other household name of the new economy. Look more closely, though, and German firms dominate some less obvious but crucial arteries of globalisation. From DHL to Kuehne & Nagel, the world’s biggest logistics firms are German. And even in manufacturing, making things is increasingly bundled with a clutch of high-end services. Storopack’s growth, for instance, depends ever more on the technicians who dream up whizzy solutions for specific packaging problems."

(i) SAP AG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG
(Founded  Weinheim, Germany (1972); Headquarters  Walldorf, Germany [neither of which is on a river bank])
(ii) DHL Express
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHL_Express
(A) Americans founded DHL in San Francisco in 1969, of which Deutsche Post completed the purchase in 2002.
(B) Bryan Burrough, The Bizarre Road of a DHL Founder. New York Times, Mar 4, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/0 ... ionaire-review.html
((book review on James D Scurlock, King Larry; The life and ruins of a billionaire Genius. Scribner, 2012; "According to DHL lore, he and one of the company’s salesmen, a silver-haired talker named Adrian Dalsey — he was the 'D' — decided to found DHL after a chance meeting in a grocery-store parking lot in 1969. It appears that the first thing they did was kick out their first investor, the 'L'”)
(iii) Kuehne + Nagel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuehne_%2B_Nagel
(section 1 History)