-->THE SILENT ACHIEVER - AND - THE EARNINGS ARE IN EUROPE
Germany has overtaken America to become the world's biggest single exporter. Germany is exporting tools, equipment and full scale capital plant and machinery that powers the rising economies of Asia and
Eastern Europe. Germany’s trade surplus is now greater than that of China, Japan and India combined. It reached the staggering sum of 16.8 Billion Euros in June alone. The profits made by German companies
from one end of the trade spectrum to the other, from consumer goods to capital plants, are running at over 33 per cent of national income. That’s the highest in 40 years! Europe’s second quarter earnings are
up 25 percent as against 11 percent in the USA. All this is reflected in the respective stock markets.
Europe’s are up by 12.8 percent compared to the US Standard and Poor’s Index which is only up 0.7 percent. Germany is now back in the historical position it was in 1904 when its global exports (of like kind) exceeded those of Great Britain. It has taken Germany since 1948 to get there, starting from a field
of physical ruin. Now, with a population of about 90 million, Germany exports more than the USA and more than Japan and China and India combined. It is an awesome economic achievement, greatly hampered by a welfare state and a luxuriant, dense, regulatory machinery.
One can only wonder what might happen over the years ahead after the national election on September 18. What might German industry be able to do if even a portion of the anchor of an over-regulated welfare state was removed?