This is exactly what I want to hear from Germany: Rettet unser Geld! Save our money! Back to the deutschmark! (A hat tip to the European Voice for spotting the book in the arrivals hall of Berlin's Tegel airport last week). Herr Henkel, along with millions of other Germans, has woken up to the damage the eurozone and the eurozone so-called rescue is doing to their country. The book is sold next to a poster that says: 'Spending on education and research: 11 billion. Spending on euro rescue: 22 billion.' As the European Voice points out, that last figure is the amount Germany is signed-up to provide to the permanent eurozone rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, due to kick-in in 2013. But on top of that 22bn euros are billions more in guarantees the German government will give to cover the countries of the periphery in case they default after 2013 . 'In case they default?' As if there is any 'in case' about it. Greece will default, and the way it's looking, well before 2013. German big cheeses, and German medium-sized taxpayers, are finally realising just how much their eurozone-obedient government has signed over to the countries of the bottomless Mediterranean money pit. So Herr Henkel's voice is just the latest among German leaders to question Chancellor Angela Merkel's policies towards the weaker eurozone countries. Although if you sit through enough European Council meetings you eventually wonder if Merkel has anything that could even be called a policy. She and the rest of what passes for leadership in the eurozone just stumble along from one chapter of the crisis to the next. They don't know what they want, except just not the breakup of the eurozone, and the eurocrats who are supposed to be implementing whatever it is politicians such as Merkel come up with as policy have been proven to be incompetent. Evil and devious, of course, but incompetent. Which is what makes me certain the break up of the eurozone must come. As I said, cheering stuff. Even after he left government, Vance senior spent years being recalled to help in diplomatic negotiations around the world. And according to one of his law partners with whom I had dinner years ago, when Vance travelled, he always took his wife. Reason: the tall and lanky former secretary of state -- known as 'Spider' to his friends -- had the kind of back trouble that often comes with that sort of vertical build. The result was that he could not bend down to tie his shoes. Mrs Vance was there to help each morning as he got dressed. Vance apparently would have been embarrassed to ask hotel staff for help. You ask: why didn't he just wear slip-ons? Vance was a Yale man born in 1917. That generation wouldn't have worn slip-ons -- or 'loafers' as he no doubt would have called them -- with anything but chinos and a polo shirt. Result of course was that no whisper of scandal could ever come from any swish hotel room in which Vance stayed. Lesson: need an alibi? Take your wife. Or I should say, the Noo Yawk Post, because its pages really have the sound of the five boroughs. British restraint is a whole other language, and the Post doesn't speak it. When the story broke, the front page splash was 'French bigshot in sodomy probe.' This then developed into: 'IMF Boss in Perv Bust.' This morning the paper called Strauss-Kahn a 'whiny fat cat' who proved 'the height of pompous arrogance' at the police station. The newspaper headlined the story: 'IMF head in snit over lack of VIP treatment.' The paper reported: 'Cops "are not thrilled by the French idiot, or his attorney." ' That would be Ben Brafman, who defended Michael Jackson against charges of child molestation. Speaking of which, you may expect Strauss-Kahn to have a hard time getting his passport back from the court, following the decades of refusal by the French government to extradite another French big shot, the convicted child molester Roman Polanski, who raped a 13-year-old American girl in 1977. If Strauss-Kahn is ordered to face trial, but can manage to get on a flight back to Paris, that, I'd say, would be the last the States would see of him. So is the court going to give this whiny flight risk back his papers for travelling? I'd reckon any Noo Yawker would say, 'fuggeddaboudit.' James Inhofe, a US Senator, is the latest member of the Washington elite to be allowed to see the photographs of Osama bin Laden's body. He says the pictures are 'gruesome.' Thanks for the tip, Senator, but I'd say the rest of us could judge that for ourselves if the White House weren't still being too affectedly refined to let the common folk have a look. Of course, despite the display of the body, the myth started that the G-men hadn't actually shot Dillinger, that a man only resembling Dillinger was killed. The FBI agents killed Dillinger by pumping three shots into his body. Apparently that was the same number that the US Navy Seals used to kill Osama bin Laden, two to the head, one to the chest. Belt and braces. Of course, Dillinger only ever actually killed ten men; bin Laden's body count is in thousands. Either way, as my country friends say when they snap the neck on a rabbit infected with myxomatosis, 'better off dead.' But why can't we see the photographs? The White House is acting as if the killing were something to be ashamed of.
Rettet unser Geld: Germans realise the euro-fraud is endangering their prosperity
The NY District Attorney in the Strauss-Kahn case: how not to get in trouble in hotels
As we say in New York: IMF Boss in Perv Bust
Bin Laden's corpse: the elite are allowed a satisfying look, but not the rest of us
Sunday, 22 May 2011
This is cheering stuff. Hans-Olaf Henkel, a former head of the Federation of German Industries and a member of the boards of Bayer and Daimler Aerospace - in other words, a German big cheese -- has just written a book called 'Save our money! Selling off Germany: How the euro-fraud is endangering our prosperity.'
The Manhattan District Attorney handling the Strauss-Kahn case is called Cyrus Vance Jr. And if you are old enough that the name sounds familiar, it is because he is the son of a former US Secretary of State, the late Cyrus Vance, who served in President Jimmy Carter's cabinet.
At times like these -- oh, dear heavens, if only there were more times like these, with the
euro-loving IMF chief in cuffs and chunks of the eurozone heading for default -- the most satisfying way to follow the adventures of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (otherwise known as 'the defendant') is by following the New York Post.
The federal government wasn't always so precious. When the FBI shot dead the gangster John
Dillinger in 1934, the body was put on public display at the Cook County Morgue. Ten thousand people -- satisfied taxpayers, I'd say, come to see that federal law enforcement employees were indeed earning their pay -- filed past to peer at the corpse. Wire service photographs of the body were sent out across the world. I'd be happy to show a few to you here, but copyright on the photos means I can't (you'll have to make do with this FBI picture of Dillinger alive).
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