The pigis are all in a mess

Portugal
Ireland
Greece
Italy
Spain

Wheras Germany seems rich in comparison with a strong economy and
the biggest, most lucrative car industry in all of Europe.
Two world wars and blanket bombing by Britain and America, dont seem to have stopped the
economic dynamo that Germany has become.

How do they do it ? the moral and economic devastation of WW2 would have sank
any other country.. but Germany rose like a phoenix from the ashes and is now calling the
shots in Europe.
After reunification with East Germany...... Germany's population is 81.7 million
wheras France comes in at 65.4 million and UK at 62 million.
Germany is no longer the compliant, guilt ridden nation of former years, it is beginning
to flex its economic muscles at the highest levels of diplomacy...
Germany is beginning to call the shots.
Britain, now a minor military and economic power on the world scene, can only
stand on the sidelines and wring its hands as Germany takes centre stage.

and your point is?

Timbo, we've been saying the same thing for the past 50 years but still haven't learned anything Germany plans and invests and we don't. Germany doesn't concentrate on financial services like we do, and it didn't deregulate like we did. We only have ourselves to blame don't we.

Funny how things have turned out. We love to boast about how we won the World Cup and two world wars. Germany was almost destroyed after WWII and look where they are now compared to today. Whilst Cameron scoffs at the Germans the fact is their economy is far far more stable than ours despite the Eurozone crisis

We were already in deep s**t before the Euro crisis and we're in deeper s**t today. Oh and our economic genius Gordon Brown has a lot to answer for.

Why do people here try so hard to belittle Britain? Britain still has the 6th largest economy in the world, a large number of multinational companies are British, in terms of countries with large populations we are quite close to the top for GDP per capita and London is one of the global finance centres. Yet people here act like we are a country with a global stature similar to Eritrea. It's bizzare.

It's being one of the global finance centres that makes our economy so vulnerable to world economic crisis like 2007-9 and the present one.

no it doesn't. Our economy has much more to it than financial.

We got hit so hard because we didn't plan ahead. You know, making hay while the sun shone.

Exactly. They threaten; impose a fair "Robin Hood" levy on transactions and we'll decamp to somewhere else.

We are their bitch.

yes, they are bastards but they are our bastards. Without them we wouldn't be raking in the money, which we currently are.

We need the tax to be levied throughout the world, else we lose a big source of our own money.

The Germans dont sell off their successful industries and let foreigners own them.
Unlike the UK.

Yes, that too, I agree. But if 30% of our GDP is the banks (and other financial entities) and two of the five largest by far banks are wiped out overnight by the 2008 crisis, it's bound to have a larger impact on our country's finances than in most isn't it? A large proportion of our government's debt is directly attributable to the rescue of those two banks isn't it?

In todays world, car production is a good indicator
of the strength of a nations economy

Car production as of 2010

Germany .......5,905,985
Spain ........2,387,900
France ........ 2,227,742
UK ......... 1,393,463

Germany dwarfs Britains car production

Britain is now a service economy we are told with the City
of London earning vast revenues worldwide for financial services.

Well its the financial sector that has been going haywire ever since
the autumn of 2008...
the collapse of Rock was just a straw in the wind.

When the financial edifice collapses we will be left with a
3rd world economy ... the car industry is all foreign owned anyway
( unlike the German motor industry that now even owns Rolls Royce ! )

debt, yes but not our deficit. Even so, large chunks of the debt will come back once it's all paid back (not all but most).

1 of the banks that got bailed out, was a direct result of buying a dutch company that had it's financials built of sand. You could say that was more unfortunate timing than anything else.

Think Frank Dobson once said, in the UK we're good at selling life insurance and McDonalds burgers to one another.

no it's not, it's biscuits.

UK - loads and loads
EU - not so many
rest of the world - poor

So biscuits are the precise indicator.

Germans seem to not bothering looking for things to blame there woes on and just get on with solving there problems.

The proposed rates of the tax are so minimal it will barely make an impact on the financial institutions, but it's not the rate they object to - it's the fact that the tax would set a precedent, and would be an attempt at reversal of deregulation and at controlling the lunatic derivatives market. That's what they really don't want.

what tax rate is it, that would effect our banks and not those outside of Europe?

It's worth remembering that in the 1930s, British engineering was considered to be as good, if not better, than German engineering.

I think the difference in our evolution since then is that Germany was in ruins, realised it needed to change culturally, and used its Martial Aid and the blank slate the war gave them to do so. Britain on the other hand spent it's money creating the welfare state and left industry to rot. By the time we realised what had happened around the 70s and 80s, it had gone too far to stop.

A fairly large portion of our current deficit is interest payments on the debt isn't it? So the money borrowed to rescue the banks is reflected in the deficit, and because so much of our economy is financial services, the tax revenue lost after those banks collapsed also accounts for a large part of the deficit. If concentrating so much on financial services was actually a good idea for the country, and not just for the financial companies, wouldn't Germany be doing it themselves?

The EU proposes stock and bond trades would be taxed at the rate of 0.1 percent, with derivatives at 0.01 percent.

It wouldn't be a large tax would it.

Our deficit doubled, if I remembered correctly. It's manageable, that's for sure. The current government are doing a good job in that respect.

Our current mess is all about the previous governments endorsement of everything Public sector. Not to mention the accelerated Public Sector employee drive during the recession.

So while the private sector where doing everything in their power to become efficient and stay afloat, Gordon Brown and Balls decided that any people who got made redundant, would be put into Public Sector work. Cooking the books and no planning ahead, that is the lasting legacy of the Labour Government I'm afraid.

Germany is about to end up paying huge amounts to help keep the ailing eurozone afloat. Thank goodness the UK kept out of the disaster that is the euro. One day the Deutschark will return as will the other national currencies which should never have beeen abolished to make way for the unwanted euro.


Nonsense and you know it.

Both the UK and Germany are important nations on the world stage. The UK remains one of the five biggest military powers in the world and is one of the top five in the United Nations Security Council. Germany has the largest economy in the EU and will remain a leading continental european nation after the euro and EU have fallen apart.

Germans are efficient, educated, work hard and are patriotic. They take pride in their work and constantly strive to improve themselves seeeing this a way of contributing to the wellbeing and international standing of their country. They have a very high work ethic and do not believe in living off the state, seeing it as living off the work of other Germans. Their public services are lightweight and efficient, and are not seen as a way of disguising unemployment.

They hold in very high regard engineers, scientists, professionals and research and development. They do not stifle their industry with stupid rules and regulations enforced by busybodies in the name of planning or health and safety, although they do take both into account with a far more common sense approach.

They do not see their houses as being get-rich-quick investments and are savers, not borrowers.

I'm absolutely not surprised they are doing better than us.

You forgot to add that they are - quite understandably - getting sick of the useless euro.