Good question: it won't, unless said 'money' is actually able to buy stuff, such as energy supplies (and that's quite a big 'if').
My take is this: the EU Commission and its brown-nosing camp followers are now almost done inverting the decision-manking structures, hence a precedent is engineered for the institutionalisation of 'permanent' states of emergencies.
The main point, as I see it--and I'd be very happy to be proven wrong, lest I stand accused to fear-mongering--is this: it's not about the 'money', but it is about the norms and procedures that are being put into place that mark a decisive, as well as divisive, break with the past.
Might it not be best to think of all of this as a German power grab? I don't claim to be an expert, but when was the last time EUrocrats even tried to push anything without German support? It remains to be seen how successful they (or rather: Germany) will be.
The difference between what happened to Greece and what is happening now is that in the case of Greece, it was Germany (and I guess France) imposing austerity on Greece, whereas now, it would be Germany imposing austerity on Germany. So, don't expect it to go the same way. Incidentally, it doesn't matter if, on paper, it was the EUrocrats who strangled Greece. EUrocrats are nothing without Germany. But Germany, having willingly shot itself in the foot, is now in a position of weakness, and it's not clear that it'll be able to impose much of anything on those who played their cards a bit better during this whole fiasco.
You make two succinct points: yes, the Greek tragedy was fuelled, ultimately, by the sky-high exposure of 'Northern' banks (mainly French, German, and Dutch) to 'Southern' bonds. High interest rates do, however, indicate elevated risks, which these 'banksters' ignored and, when th chicken came home to roost, they all ran to the nanny state to ask for handouts. If you and I do that, we're lazy bums, eh?!
As to the current mess, well, yes and no: Germany shot itself in the foot (or a bit higher), and I do think that the austerity for the masses that will ensue is quite different. On this I'm in agreement with you--but 'the 1%' will not eat these losses, as the deafening silence emanating from Big Business and High Finance indicates. This is, in my opinion, another round of 'rules (and losses) for thee, but not for me'. And the EU statement holds quite clearly that 'industry' is now at the table, while we the people aren't. Corporations + State = Fascism.
Hence, I'm unsure if 'Germany' played this crappily, as German politicians and industrialists, as well as their camp followers in finance and media, appear to be o.k. with all of it, in particular the latter (media), as the notion of (means-tested) 'solidarity' is a perfect way for them to continue their virtue-signalling at the expense of we the people.
I'm not so sure that German big business can insulate itself from the pain of the rest. After all, it needs someone to sell its products to. If you cannot even heat yourself, let alone fill a gas tank, then you aren't exactly going to be buying a new car, are you?
Sure you are, once the auto-industry lobbies national and EU parliaments to ban cars produced before 20XX as destroyers of climate.
This is not a personal attack, but a general observation: when talking politics on this level, there's no upper or outer limit to cynicism. Instead, cynicism is the only useful metric and diving rod.
Whether or not a given legislator, business or similar power structure actually believes, engages in doublethink or just use semantics to dress their iron gauntlet in words of velveeta is completely irrelevant, but as we are used to thinking in lies/truth as a binary mutually limiting and defining pair, we fool ourselves when trying to analyse and discern motive, while the powerbrokers never lie, they just use truth and language to communicate in the same way a stage magician uses props.
So, in what way does the auto industry stand to gain the most at the lowest risk with the least accountability? Put the question like that and you usually arrive at a prognosis with a high degree of probability.
Example: Ukraine is now forfeiting its loans to other nations. What can they do? They can offer up their natural resources, especially in occupied territory, as security. This would be virtually impossible to refuse for the banks and governements backing Zelensky, both practically and politically.
If they deny Zelensky this, he's off the hook re: the loans because then they must extendthe deadline. If they accept, they are now in direct conflict with Russia. As they do not want that, they will in that case try to buy Russia off, rather than open war without proxy.
For Ukraine and Russia both, this is win/win no matter what happens. For the peoples of the EU/US, it's lose/lose no matter what.
What you're suggesting (banning cars produced before 20XX) would be much more difficult to pull off than you think. I grew up in Serbia in the 1990s, which was a time of major crisis. You did not buy new stuff. A pair of new shoes was a major investment. If something (say, a TV) broke down, then you got a repair guy to fix it, possibly again and again and again (labor - yours and everyone else's - was cheap, after all), long after a Westerner would have given up and just bought a new product. If you really, truly couldn't get it fixed, not even in a kinda-sorta way, then *maybe* you bought a new one, but just as likely, you did without.
As the population gets much poorer (which is where this seems to be going), people simply won't be in a position to buy new cars. Sure, some people will, but nowhere near enough to keep the German car industry afloat. (And it's not like they can just sell to Russians instead - ha!) If you try to ban old cars, what's going to happen is that the law will be largely ignored. After all, who's going to implement it? Your local policeman cannot afford a new car, and neither can anyone (or close enough) in his entire social network. To the extent that the law is applied, it'll simply mean that people will make do without cars. That would actually be good for the environment, but it wouldn't help the car industry.
I not only know what you talk about, I've seen it first hand. In Split and Dubrovnik, the other Germany, and more places. That's how it went down behind the Iron Curtain, and also in rural Sweden at the time - we may have (had) first world status materially since the 1960s, in the eyes of foreigners but that's all in the cities. When my mother grew up, washing was done by hand in the yard. Virtually every other household had a pig or two, maybe a cow or shares in cows lodged at a farm, maybe goats and definitely chickens.
Also, lots of people made alcohol themselves - even sharing blueprints of a still was illegal and pounsihable by prison.
See, Sweden as in our major cities as shown to tourists and Sweden the countryside was and is two very different places - I'm sure you can relate.
But: do you see any such signs of ingenuity, independence, stubborness, and can-do attitude among the under fifty year olds in western Europe?
I sure don't, all I see and have seen is an ever-increasing attitude and notion that "they" must "fix" whatever the topic is. When talking to young people my son's age, The State and EU are always the first go-tos when it comes to doing anything. Or, if from a wealthier background, "just buy a new one" or "pay someone to do it" is the silver bullet solution.
From colleagues and co-workers in various jobs, from driving a forklifter and acting as mediator between russian, polish and romanian coworkers to academia with hungarian, czech, and bosnian colleagues - my experience is that the attitude you describe is a product of the 50+ years of the shadow of the Soviet Union and communism, as well as previous history under one king or another. For western europeans, history was killed in may 6 1945 and restarted from scratch more or less.
And since it is perfectly clear that authority is targetting the middle-class (no surprise, the upper class can fight back and the lumpenproletariat have nothing to steal) for any infraction whatsoever, and said middle-class is virtually competing to appease master (witness the austrian, british and german compliance with the Covid-burkha), only migrant groups who are numerous enough to have parallel economies (such as gypsies and moslems do in Sweden) and/or are violent/difficult enough to police will be left alone to do as you describe - witness how France used militarised police against Yellow Vest protesters but has done nothing to the virtually perpetually ongoing riots in the arab/african ghettoes.
The white indigenous western europeans will eagerly comply, competing to be the goodest, bestiest EU-citizen ever, thinking that if they just comply enough, then the EUSSR and the local State pontifex' will leave them be.
Russians, serbs, turks, greeks, albanians, gypsies, romanians, and so on all are smarter than that.
When the economy collapses, attitudes quickly change and people adapt as they must. Sure, some people drink/stone themselves to death (just ask some Russians about it), and others fall prey to Ponzi schemes of various types and get even poorer than they would have otherwise. Some get very rich by profiting from everyone else's misery, and others get killed while trying to do so. Most people just muddle through somehow (generally without any sort of grand strategy, just do one thing here, another thing there, and somehow make do), while adapting to a much lower standard of living than they were accustomed to.
The evil former EU Central banker Draghi felt down today. Elections by the end of September. (but they were anticipated only by a month from natural legislation end)
Hope you EU guys are dropping down all of your Prime Ministers if not your Parliament! You should!
At least we'll see what's going to happen then, instead of watching this horror movies produced by EU Commission and EU PM cabinets. Especially toward the proxy UCA (United Criminals of America) war against Russia and energy related shortage. Already EU Commission preoccupied of italian policies after their famous globalist criminal Drgahi resigned...
How does "money" help with actual supply shortages?
Good question: it won't, unless said 'money' is actually able to buy stuff, such as energy supplies (and that's quite a big 'if').
My take is this: the EU Commission and its brown-nosing camp followers are now almost done inverting the decision-manking structures, hence a precedent is engineered for the institutionalisation of 'permanent' states of emergencies.
The main point, as I see it--and I'd be very happy to be proven wrong, lest I stand accused to fear-mongering--is this: it's not about the 'money', but it is about the norms and procedures that are being put into place that mark a decisive, as well as divisive, break with the past.
We cannot buy something which does not exist, or in short supply.
Re: norms and procedures
Might it not be best to think of all of this as a German power grab? I don't claim to be an expert, but when was the last time EUrocrats even tried to push anything without German support? It remains to be seen how successful they (or rather: Germany) will be.
The difference between what happened to Greece and what is happening now is that in the case of Greece, it was Germany (and I guess France) imposing austerity on Greece, whereas now, it would be Germany imposing austerity on Germany. So, don't expect it to go the same way. Incidentally, it doesn't matter if, on paper, it was the EUrocrats who strangled Greece. EUrocrats are nothing without Germany. But Germany, having willingly shot itself in the foot, is now in a position of weakness, and it's not clear that it'll be able to impose much of anything on those who played their cards a bit better during this whole fiasco.
You make two succinct points: yes, the Greek tragedy was fuelled, ultimately, by the sky-high exposure of 'Northern' banks (mainly French, German, and Dutch) to 'Southern' bonds. High interest rates do, however, indicate elevated risks, which these 'banksters' ignored and, when th chicken came home to roost, they all ran to the nanny state to ask for handouts. If you and I do that, we're lazy bums, eh?!
As to the current mess, well, yes and no: Germany shot itself in the foot (or a bit higher), and I do think that the austerity for the masses that will ensue is quite different. On this I'm in agreement with you--but 'the 1%' will not eat these losses, as the deafening silence emanating from Big Business and High Finance indicates. This is, in my opinion, another round of 'rules (and losses) for thee, but not for me'. And the EU statement holds quite clearly that 'industry' is now at the table, while we the people aren't. Corporations + State = Fascism.
Hence, I'm unsure if 'Germany' played this crappily, as German politicians and industrialists, as well as their camp followers in finance and media, appear to be o.k. with all of it, in particular the latter (media), as the notion of (means-tested) 'solidarity' is a perfect way for them to continue their virtue-signalling at the expense of we the people.
I'm not so sure that German big business can insulate itself from the pain of the rest. After all, it needs someone to sell its products to. If you cannot even heat yourself, let alone fill a gas tank, then you aren't exactly going to be buying a new car, are you?
Sure you are, once the auto-industry lobbies national and EU parliaments to ban cars produced before 20XX as destroyers of climate.
This is not a personal attack, but a general observation: when talking politics on this level, there's no upper or outer limit to cynicism. Instead, cynicism is the only useful metric and diving rod.
Whether or not a given legislator, business or similar power structure actually believes, engages in doublethink or just use semantics to dress their iron gauntlet in words of velveeta is completely irrelevant, but as we are used to thinking in lies/truth as a binary mutually limiting and defining pair, we fool ourselves when trying to analyse and discern motive, while the powerbrokers never lie, they just use truth and language to communicate in the same way a stage magician uses props.
So, in what way does the auto industry stand to gain the most at the lowest risk with the least accountability? Put the question like that and you usually arrive at a prognosis with a high degree of probability.
Example: Ukraine is now forfeiting its loans to other nations. What can they do? They can offer up their natural resources, especially in occupied territory, as security. This would be virtually impossible to refuse for the banks and governements backing Zelensky, both practically and politically.
If they deny Zelensky this, he's off the hook re: the loans because then they must extendthe deadline. If they accept, they are now in direct conflict with Russia. As they do not want that, they will in that case try to buy Russia off, rather than open war without proxy.
For Ukraine and Russia both, this is win/win no matter what happens. For the peoples of the EU/US, it's lose/lose no matter what.
But I'll be very happy if 'm wrong.
What you're suggesting (banning cars produced before 20XX) would be much more difficult to pull off than you think. I grew up in Serbia in the 1990s, which was a time of major crisis. You did not buy new stuff. A pair of new shoes was a major investment. If something (say, a TV) broke down, then you got a repair guy to fix it, possibly again and again and again (labor - yours and everyone else's - was cheap, after all), long after a Westerner would have given up and just bought a new product. If you really, truly couldn't get it fixed, not even in a kinda-sorta way, then *maybe* you bought a new one, but just as likely, you did without.
As the population gets much poorer (which is where this seems to be going), people simply won't be in a position to buy new cars. Sure, some people will, but nowhere near enough to keep the German car industry afloat. (And it's not like they can just sell to Russians instead - ha!) If you try to ban old cars, what's going to happen is that the law will be largely ignored. After all, who's going to implement it? Your local policeman cannot afford a new car, and neither can anyone (or close enough) in his entire social network. To the extent that the law is applied, it'll simply mean that people will make do without cars. That would actually be good for the environment, but it wouldn't help the car industry.
I not only know what you talk about, I've seen it first hand. In Split and Dubrovnik, the other Germany, and more places. That's how it went down behind the Iron Curtain, and also in rural Sweden at the time - we may have (had) first world status materially since the 1960s, in the eyes of foreigners but that's all in the cities. When my mother grew up, washing was done by hand in the yard. Virtually every other household had a pig or two, maybe a cow or shares in cows lodged at a farm, maybe goats and definitely chickens.
Also, lots of people made alcohol themselves - even sharing blueprints of a still was illegal and pounsihable by prison.
See, Sweden as in our major cities as shown to tourists and Sweden the countryside was and is two very different places - I'm sure you can relate.
But: do you see any such signs of ingenuity, independence, stubborness, and can-do attitude among the under fifty year olds in western Europe?
I sure don't, all I see and have seen is an ever-increasing attitude and notion that "they" must "fix" whatever the topic is. When talking to young people my son's age, The State and EU are always the first go-tos when it comes to doing anything. Or, if from a wealthier background, "just buy a new one" or "pay someone to do it" is the silver bullet solution.
From colleagues and co-workers in various jobs, from driving a forklifter and acting as mediator between russian, polish and romanian coworkers to academia with hungarian, czech, and bosnian colleagues - my experience is that the attitude you describe is a product of the 50+ years of the shadow of the Soviet Union and communism, as well as previous history under one king or another. For western europeans, history was killed in may 6 1945 and restarted from scratch more or less.
And since it is perfectly clear that authority is targetting the middle-class (no surprise, the upper class can fight back and the lumpenproletariat have nothing to steal) for any infraction whatsoever, and said middle-class is virtually competing to appease master (witness the austrian, british and german compliance with the Covid-burkha), only migrant groups who are numerous enough to have parallel economies (such as gypsies and moslems do in Sweden) and/or are violent/difficult enough to police will be left alone to do as you describe - witness how France used militarised police against Yellow Vest protesters but has done nothing to the virtually perpetually ongoing riots in the arab/african ghettoes.
The white indigenous western europeans will eagerly comply, competing to be the goodest, bestiest EU-citizen ever, thinking that if they just comply enough, then the EUSSR and the local State pontifex' will leave them be.
Russians, serbs, turks, greeks, albanians, gypsies, romanians, and so on all are smarter than that.
When the economy collapses, attitudes quickly change and people adapt as they must. Sure, some people drink/stone themselves to death (just ask some Russians about it), and others fall prey to Ponzi schemes of various types and get even poorer than they would have otherwise. Some get very rich by profiting from everyone else's misery, and others get killed while trying to do so. Most people just muddle through somehow (generally without any sort of grand strategy, just do one thing here, another thing there, and somehow make do), while adapting to a much lower standard of living than they were accustomed to.
Great decision to submit to the formation of the EU. A bunch of snobs in Belgium tell everyone what to do. What could go wrong?
Buy your basmati rice NOW. I bought three big bags.
The evil former EU Central banker Draghi felt down today. Elections by the end of September. (but they were anticipated only by a month from natural legislation end)
Hope you EU guys are dropping down all of your Prime Ministers if not your Parliament! You should!
At least we'll see what's going to happen then, instead of watching this horror movies produced by EU Commission and EU PM cabinets. Especially toward the proxy UCA (United Criminals of America) war against Russia and energy related shortage. Already EU Commission preoccupied of italian policies after their famous globalist criminal Drgahi resigned...