By P Gosselin
-1.6%!
That’s how much Germany’s industrial production fell in December, 2023. It’s the seventh-straight month of decline as the country’s energy woes mount.
One reason is reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports today :”Germany’s Industrial Production Falls For Seventh-Straight Month” in December 2023, far worse than expected.
To underscore the seriousness, 2023’s industrial production result is a whopping 10% below pre-pandemic levels.
One of the major drivers behind the demise is arguably the country’s disastrous energy policy, which has entailed shutting down cheap and steady conventional sources such as nuclear and natural gas and increasingly relying on unstable wind and solar energy. Energy prices have soared over the past years, thus driving inflation.
Things aren’t expected to improve much any time soon as the country is currently being plagued by strikes by train drivers, airport and airline personnel, who are fighting for higher wages that have been eroded away by high inflation. Energy supplies remain unstable and are expected to stay high.
Farmers are angry and have been demonstrating for weeks, often blocking transportation routes.
If there’s any light at the end of the tunnel, it’s a very faint one and the tunnel may be very long.
Currently many companies are announcing plans to move operations to business- friendlier locations.
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“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop [the United States]. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” – —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970.
“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy … One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy any more.” —- Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-chair of IPCC WG III, New American, Nov. 19, 2010
It’s been a long time coming and now it’s here.
“Industrial Production Falls 7th Consecutive Month”
Excellent quotes that point out global factors at work today, and it all adds up.
A global recession is being masked somewhat by rises in government debt and resulting inflation. In real terms, de-development is at work.
Port Talbot and all those non green jobs would agree.
Production has been stagnating in the US since 2007; been declining every month since Aug 2022.
The faint light at the end of the tunnel is in fact the headlight of a Chinese engine coming very fast.
My perspective, not saying it is absolutely correct, is that the Chinese engine is faltering and ready to plunge off of a collapsing tofu-dreg bridge.
A lot of YouTube economics commentators are saying that but I don’t believe it. China has a way of addressing problems and dealing with them quickly. Not saying I like such authoritarianism- but China does know how to be very productive.
Even the ‘experts’ can’t agree on it. Preface from CNN Business item today:
El-Erian, Krugman and other economists have very different opinions on China’s struggling economyZahra Tayeb
China sells a lot of goods to a lot of countries.
If those buyers are having economic problems then they don’t buy as much from China, and China’s economy suffers.
It’s no surprise that Germany’s economic production is slowing down. That’s what happens when the price of energy skyrockets.
The price of energy is skyrocketing because of the flawed Net Zero policies that favor unreliable windmills and solar over conventional power plants.
As long as German politicians keep promoting windmills and solar, they will continue to have economic problems. More windmills and solar will not make things better, they will make things worse.
Will the German economy have to crash and burn before German politicians realize this?
Well as the IEA said back in 2020
“the system value of variable renewables such as wind and solar decreases as their share in the power supply increases”
‘Projected Costs of Generating Electricity’ IEA 2020 p13
Denmark and Germany have the highest unreliable energy penetration in Europe and also the highest retail electrical prices. Go figure.
I worked for a Chinese engineering firm for a few years. There are drawbacks to disappearing people.
They certainly are able to act as quickly and forcefully as an authoritarian government can, but there is a lot of corruption and they often have difficulty making decisions because they do not want to stick their necks out, lest their head get cut off.
China has a demographics problem thanks to the one child policy, the older generation is getting to what we would call the retirement age and are less productive. Amplifying that is a lack of a populous younger generation to replace them complicated by the fact that what there is of a younger generation is predominantly male. As a result China’s working population and population in general is in somewhat of a decline. The exact figures are not clear due to China’s obfuscation of the data.
Farmers are angry and have been demonstrating for weeks, often blocking transportation routes.
Not just Germany but across the EU-
🔴 LAND GRAB & FOOD SUPPLY CONTROL: Farmer Protests Erupt Across Europe Against Net Zero Agenda – YouTube
Not happy.
Spanish farmers are joining the queue
“Spanish farmers say paella rice under threat after EU pesticide ban”A Spanish rice variety traditionally used to make paella is under threat from a fungus after the European Union banned a pesticide farmers said they relied upon, in another example of how the bloc’s environmental rules are angering growers.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spains-paella-rice-could-disappear-say-farmers-angry-eu-rules-2024-02-08/
Communists always find a way to mess up the food supply. I guess now it is the EUSSR’s turn…
The EU[SSR] – Verhofstadt in particular – could really do wih some Extreme Unction.
“”Europe farmers protests: EU scraps plans to halve pesticide use
Ursula von der Leyen, has announced plans to scrap a proposal halving pesticide use across the EU. The move is an apparent concession to farmers who have been protesting in many EU countries against regulations including the planned reduction in pesticide use.””
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68218907
Did the Spanish farmers miss the [small] boat?
I’ve always thought the term Extreme Unction is kinda funny. Is there a medium unction? An unction light? It’s such an over the top term- like climate emergency. Perhaps alarmists view stopping “carbon pollution” as Extreme Climate Unction.
The Roman Catholic sacrament of anointing of the sick or ‘extreme unction’ is performed on a seriously ill person for spiritual and physical strength, or when a person is close to death as preparation for heaven.
Gaia can use that
Right- I was raised Catholic. Never cared for it. Especially after the day I was in church- probably 12 years old- they were passing the basket- I had a quarter in my hand and pretended to drop it in the basket but kept it. Two seconds later, the nun who was sitting right behind me- I didn’t know it of course- stood up- and said loud enough for the entire congregation to hear it, “Joseph- GIVE ME THAT MONEY”. 🙂
That would be traumatic! 🙂
When they shoved the basket under my nose I just waved my hand and said “no thanks”. My brother sitting next to me thought that was hilarious. “What do you mean, ‘no thanks’?” 🙂
I was raised Catholic too but have never heard of “extreme unction”. Learn something new every day!
Is that Gaia Vince or gaia earth? 🙂
Joseph, it’s Latin meaning Last Anointing. Your “medium unction” or “unction light” would be given to the sick, but not those near death. That is simply called “Anointing of the Sick.”
Pesticides are expensive. Farmers don’t use them unless it improves their crops significantly. Farmers are correct to be wary of policies and politicians that makes their work harder and causes them to have less money….farmers being much closer than politicians to the economic lesson that money is a measure of human sweat.
Do you think there are controlling interests pulling levers toward that end, e.g., WEF?
EUSSR? Nice! I hope it catches on.
Yes, but be fair, the ‘British’ politicians are doing a lot to keep us near the front of the queue.
Cheap Gas? In Germany?
That’s a joke, right?
Unless they start fracking the huge amounts of gas they have I suppose one should laugh at their blind faith
Especially now that Biden wants to limit America’s export of LNG- to “save the planet”. Of course Germany now is pleading for more NG, but in theory, they want to stop all ff.
Don’t be surprised
Joe Biden signals he has no interest in signing US-UK trade agreement – Grauniad
Some ally.
Biden is senile (see the Special Counsel report).
You need other and younger presidential candidates. What about Ocasio-Cortez?
Why would we want to replace one imbecile, Joe Biden, with another imbecile like AOC?
Yes, that would be the very definition of net-zero.
Trumps an imbecile too.
You are living in a state of confusion.
The root cause are clearly the extremely high energy prices. The German bureau for statistics (destatis) is even separately tracking the production of the energy intensive industry and you can clearly see that especially this industry branch is nearly collapsing. Their production output declined by app. 25% and is now even lower than during CoVid Lockdown hightime. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Industrie-Verarbeitendes-Gewerbe/_Grafik/_Interaktiv/produktionsentwicklung-energieintensiven-industriezweige.html (red line is energy intensive industry production index, blue line is general industry and mining)
That is a remarkable graph and very telling.
It also implies that non-energy intensive industry in Germany must be doing very well to compensate.
What Germany needs is a strong man who rids it of the crap. He may or may not have a moustache.
It may come to that if we are not careful. History repeating itself.
Is he a socialist, environmentalist, vegetarian?
It might be time to choose a meat eater.
Preferably a non wannabe artist
No, he was not a socialist.
There may be a hint in the name of the party he founded:
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)
https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists
You really expect me to take this drivel seriously?
Mass murder, concentration camps, deportations, collectivist ideology – sounds just like socialism.
.
Hiltler was asked by an American journalist before WW2 about the use of socialism in the name – actually a compound word nationalsocialist- and he was adamant his party wasn’t socialist?
Do you know better than Hitler himself?
Even today in Bavaria there’s a right wing party christian socialist union.
Translations can be often confuse similar words with different meanings
Socialism is all about control. Nazism is all about control. Where’s the difference?
Here’s a summary of 2023
In 2023 German production in industry was 1.5% lower in calendar-adjusted terms than in the previous year, with industrial production down 0.7%, production in energy production down 15.0% and production in construction down 0.8% year on year. Overall, production remained relatively stable until May 2023.
Long term trend shown in a chart
Click on 10Y (ten year) chart
Germany Industrial Production (tradingeconomics.com)
In tech world, we say this is a feature, not a bug.
It’s the end goal, not a symptom of some other goal.
Fujitsu!!!
You go woke, you go broke.
As Budweiser found out, at least they are rapidly changing that tune.
The mainstream media is cheerleading Bidenomics these days by talking about how the US economy is growing faster than the UK economy and the Germany economy.
The charts are everywhere, magnified in the same way “the anomaly” temperature charts are magnified – to keep the focus away from the bigger picture.
There’s an old saying, “you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other people the bear is chasing.”
OK. The bear will eat Germany first. But this bear won’t be so easily sated. And if the US economy is stagnant, the bear won’t have any trouble finding its next meal.
The farm protesters in Europe need to go after the tourist venues where the paid eco protesters hang out for vacations after hard “work” at roadblocks, art museums, and pipelines.
And the best that Green economics minister Habeck can do is to plead with companies to support the country by not moving production to cheaper countries. Won’t be a surprise that Habeck has never run a company.
And why is it cheaper to operate elsewhere? Because stupid German politicians are driving up costs with their Net Zero insanity.
Politicans of all stripes should keep their noses out of the Free Market. The less interference the Free Market feels, the better it does and this benefits everyone.
The real problem is stupid politcians putting their noses in places where they don’t belong.
Less government, and more Free Enterprise, is better.
Free Enterprise would drop windmills and solar like a hot potato.
This is what progressive socialists call success. And the depopulating of Earth of human society (leaving behind of course elites and their private jets) will be the big payday if they can only get the masses to go along.
Germany is in permanent recession until they reverse energiewende, restart their nukes, drill and frack for gas in the North Sea, and restore normal trade relations with Russia. It’s not complicated. The AfD,(Alternative for Duetsland opposes funding for Ukraine and wind/solar) is soaring in the polls so there is hope.
Surrendering to Russia is not a good plan for Germany. They know enough history for that. The 1980s was not that long ago.
You sound like one of those Make Russia Great Again – bought and paid for – Republican traitors.
Remember, your founding fathers introduced the 2nd Amendment for Benedict Arnolds and the modern Republicans, not to kill schoolkids.
Why not . US has been kissing the ring of the wahabi Saudis since WW2 solely because of the supply of oil
Remember Germany has been getting gas even in soviet times.
Afd lost in the polls recently and there are massive protests in germany and austria agains afd / fpö / identitäre.
Opposing funding for Ukraine, leaving Nato, Texit…it’s all good money russia invested in western bad faith actors.
They probably stir up a lot of this culture war bullshit too.
“Germany is in permanent recession until they reverse energiewende”
I agree. They are just making their situation worse by continuing down the Net Zero road.
German politicians are killing their country to save the world.
The bad part is there is no evidence the world needs to be saved. They are operating on unsubstantiated assumptions about CO2. They have taken these unsubstantiated assumptions as facts and, as a result, are flying blind into economic chaos.
Germany’s future is in the hands of people who are operating solely on unsubstantiated assumptions about CO2. They couldn’t prove that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential to life on Earth, if their lives depended on doing so. Yet they are wrecking Germany’s economy based solely on unproven assumptions.
Idiocracy? Mass psychosis? It has to be something like that becaue their behavior is not based on any facts about CO2 and any harmful interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere. There are no such facts. They don’t exist. Only in the minds of climate change alarmists do they exist. Only in the minds, not in reality.
Give them credit: The Red-Green-Black ruling coalition DELIVERS on their campaign promises. They said they’d destroy the economy to Save the Planet… and they’re delivering. German Voters are getting exactly what they asked for.
Not red green black. Red green yellow. The CDU and their allies christian socialist union were voted out (black)
Very nice. The average guy will only stand for so much. The danger is the longer he waits to act the stronger the push back will be. Better to push back sooner rather than later.
Hopefully, other industrialized countries will take their cue from these numbers and put the brakes on compulsory shifts toward renewable energies in the name of saving the environment. It’s worth noting that the rapidly growing economies of of south and east Asia have rejected any interference with their growth and poverty alleviation by any widespread adoption of wind and solar power sources because they’re fully aware of their limitations. It’s only the West, where policy makers continue to be conned by the climate alarmists, that continues to undermine its overall growth and consumer welfare by sacrificing them to energies that can’t deliver.