Leftist governments are destroying Europe

Germany will be among the worse to suffer. United States will follow suit.

Only 100 years ago, Germany in the post-WWI Weimar Republic printed so much currency trillions of marks were needed to buy groceries. The lesson seems to have been lost on Olaf Scholz.

Today, inflation in Germany has abated somewhat from double digits a few months ago, not as a result of any government policy actions but solely a result of the softening price of world oil & natural gas which had dramatic price rises last year during the winter of discontent when fossil fuel prices rose to the equivalent of US$500 a barrel owing to supply shortages and the short-sighted an nonsensical policy of spending a trillion dollars on “renewables” in the erroneous belief that these intermittent and unreliable energy sources could be developed at a competitive cost and displace fossil fuels.

The wild swings in energy prices and the recent sharp drop have nothing to do with Scholz policies and everything to do with world prices for fossil fuels, particularly natural gas.

Source: Trading Economics

Scholz did plan for the coming winter, importing vast quantities of LNG from United States and the middle East to ensure enough storage to at least keep the lights on for the winter, and he should be commended for facing that reality. But his delusion that “renewables” can solve Germany’s longer term energy needs is nonsense. Germany is working hard to add LNG terminals to ensure adequate fossil fuels but still dreams that an energy “transition” to renewables is the right course, reported in a recent Blomberg article quoted below:

Finding other sources for natural gas is sensible. Believing that “investing in the green transition” will “keep energy cheap” points to the need for mental health therapy. A trillion dollars of capital expenditures haven’t made a dent in fossil fuel use and Germany is now adding back coal, the poster boy for the attack on fossil fuels.

Wind and solar now comprise about 15% of total German electricity generation capacity despite the massive investment, and in absolute terms the use of fossil fuels has risen, not dropped. Scholz should have listened to the United States Republican Party debate last week and paid attention to Vivek Ramaswamy who correctly called the “climate change” rhetoric a hoax. But he would rather perpetuate the hoax for the political capital fomenting fear provides than actually lead Germany to a more prosperous future. He has that in common with Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, and a host of other socialists and pretend non-socialists in the halls of power.

This charade will eventually end under its own weight. In the process, Europe’s largest economy will experience lots of pain while Asian economies with the common sense to use more fossil fuels rather than less will enjoy growth and improving per capita incomes. In the words of Ramaswamy “human flourishing requires fossil fuels”.

Watch as United States shifts from exporting jobs to China to a new paradigm of exporting jobs to India while trying to fill gaps in population growth by encouraging illegal immigrants to cross the Southern border bringing opiods, fentanyl and human trafficking with them. The sidewalks of Portland, San Franscisco, Los Angeles and Chicago will get even more crowded with drug addicted homeless people, crime will keep rising and the American economy will suffer the pain of excess government debt, high inflation and a self-inflicted shortage of fossil fuels as the “progressives” in Washington keep doubling down on “woke” nonsense and the specious global warming theory they have promoted to hang on to power by frightening the masses.

Europe is in danger of economic collapse and United States under Democrats is not that far behind. It is a great time to be an historian and chronicle decades of stupidity in the halls of power. Climate change has to be the greatest mass mania in world history, only matched by the pervasive belief of Catholics that the Pope talks directly to God and rivalled by the ancient Aztecs and Incas who persuaded themselves that ritual murders of their own children would improve the weather.