The price of expansion
BERLIN (Own report) The explosive German economic expansion, which began with the takeover of the DDR (East Germany) and led to twelve years of world-wide restructuring, has led the government into a severe financial crisis. The Federal government now plays down the fact that public coffers are short of some 30,000 million euros. The provincial government of Schleswig Holstein is bankrupt. German cities are now shutting down social services and the number of unemployed is rising further.
The state institutions of the Federal Republic laid out several hundred thousand million euros for the takeover of the DDR, which ended up overwhelmingly with large West German firms and capital investments. The related economic expansion into eastern Europe was (and is) subsidised in great measure. German commercial banks are still ready to extend necessary finance. In several individual states, servicing state debt takes up around one quarter of the public budget.
Struggle for world market
Small speculators were encouraged to spread the scope of international investments. Hundreds of thousands bought overvalued shares in the semi-state company ,,Deutsche Telecom". Amongst other things, ,,Telecom" used this cash to finance the takeover of "Voice Stream" (USA). In the meantime ,,Telecom" piled up a debt mountain of around 50,000 million euros. The small shareholders have been bilked of the imaginary value of their shares and of their anticipated dividends. Worldwide, ,,Deutsche Telecom" is seeking to destroy around 50,000 jobs whilst improving its profit margin by increasing turnover.
Potential for aggression
Internal social rejection, which has accompanied this crisis of expansion, is leading to a definite radicalisation of the middle classes according to German sociologists. Aggressive attitudes are catching on and underlie the sometimes offensive, sometimes militant foreign policy which Germany is following.