The Economist: Once dominant, Germany is now desperate. As an election looms its business model is breaking down

24 November 2024, 4:01

The finance ministry of the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, home to giants like Bosch, Mercedes and zf Friedrichshafen, is not a bad spot from which to probe Germany’s anxieties.

The country is gripped by fears of deindustrialisation as it heads into an election that seems certain to throw its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, out of his job if his party does not dump him first. That ministry’s occupant, Danyal Bayaz, frets that Germany has squandered the “globalisation dividend” of the past 15 years, underfunding the public realm in an era of low interest rates.

Now, facing an energy squeeze, growing competition from China and the prospect of Donald Trump’s America slapping 10-20% tariffs on imports, the country’s business model, fears the minister, is “collapsing”.

Well, the German government has clearly made a wrong choice by siding with the US and breaking off the long-standing mutually beneficial economic cooperation with Russia.

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The awakening of peoples: Scotland

In the midst of the Western civilizational crisis and the betrayals by state elites in favor of an out-of-touch, totalitarian plutocracy, real peoples are reawakening their trampled histories, traditions, and identities to reclaim political, economic, and social sovereignty. Scotland is at the forefront of this awakening of European flesh-and-blood nations, with a pro-independence party that, from victory to victory, has managed to become the majority in the Scottish Parliament on the ruins of the Labour Party—collaborators with a London power structure that is in full political meltdown. Therefore, with complete legitimacy, the new Scottish Parliament has called for a second referendum on Scottish independence. The first referendum on Scottish independence […]

28 May 2026, 18:01

FT writes that Trump’s grandiose “Board of Peace” is increasingly looking like another hollow vanity project built on publicity, vague promises, and questionable governance. Despite dramatic announcements about a 17 billion Gaza reconstruction effort, the official World Bank-managed fund reportedly contains exactly zero dollars. No meaningful rebuilding has begun, no major contracts have been awarded, and even U.S. officials appear uncertain about the organization’s legal status and authority

Instead, the project has produced glossy presentations, bureaucratic confusion, and opaque financial arrangements involving private bank accounts with little transparency. Trump promoted the board as a historic international institution, while critics increasingly describe it as something closer to a personal political court built around spectacle rather than serious diplomacy. Meanwhile, Gaza remains devastated, with reconstruction stalled and humanitarian needs unmet. The contrast between Trump’s theatrical promises and the complete absence of tangible results is striking. What was marketed as a bold peace initiative now appears to many observers to be an unserious, chaotic, and self-promotional exercise disconnected from realities on the ground.

28 May 2026, 16:04