Sunday 4 March 2012

Germany: An Economic Role Model


Today it’s a bit of a rambling rant! Tomorrow it’s a little review/preview of Arsenal’s games and a comparitive look at two teams.
But today! To the rambling rant!
Germany has long been a country that fascinated me. Still does. It has been in the news quite a bit recently for all the wrong reasons – it is being portrayed as the bully forcing Greece and Ireland to accept austerity measures to get their economies back on track. But I believe that while mistakes have been made, Germany is a country that more and more should be looking to on how to run its economy. Their economic record would be a reason I am less irritated by someone like Germany advising us how to get our house in order.
One of the greatest things Germany has going for it are the regional banks. Banks for me, are institutions that should be about the community they serve. I am totally against worldwide banking corporations whose sole interest is to make as much money as possible and their CEO’s earn millions in wages. Think about if they earned a decent wage, and the rest of that money was paid in interest to the people depositing their money with the banks? Hmmm? But that’s a side issue. Germany’s regional banks should be the model for banking. Yes they ventured into the investments scandal in the last decade and like nearly every other countries banks, had to write down a couple of euros worth of debt to investors, but that’s where Government should be doing it’s job with REGULATION. You’d be hard pressed to look past the Glass Steigal Act of 1930’s America as a solid guideline for banking practice. I’m all for collaboration so that one banks debit cards work with anothers – that’s where companies like Visa and Mastercard can facilitate regional banks on a national and international level. I believe we need more than those two companies doing this, but this is just an idea being thrown out there.  Banks should be about facilitation and not about gigantic unnatural profiteering.
In regards to one of the current scourges of Europe – youth unemployment – Germany has quite a good apprenticeship scheme that while not perfect, is a good thing to have. It gives youth a chance to see what the work place is like and if an apprenticeship is something of interest to them. It also allows for businesses to assess young people and see if they’d be able to contribute to the business and if so – provide further training. This whole ‘free market’ rubbish that is benig pedalled by America as a whole, the conservatives in the UK and other right of centre politicians should be ignored.
Stats like this show they know how to control and manage the downs:
Best way of doing this? Not allowing for insane banking.

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