Posted on 03/10/2009 5:44:55 PM PDT by Lorianne
Recession? What recession? From Berlin, it's been hard to tell that there is a global economic downturn. A lack of industry and years of high unemployment mean that Germany's capital can't sink much further.
For most in the German capital, the financial crisis and the ensuing economic downturn seem unreal, a distant problem affecting other cities far away. The reason? The city wasn't doing terribly well even in the good times. It has become used to a dour economy and didn't have very far to fall.
"Because Berlin has done relatively so poorly for the last 40 years, it can't do much worse," Michael Burda, an economist at the city's Humboldt University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
If anything, the economic difficulties facing other European capitals will lead to Berlin fears that it may lose its coveted place at the bottom of the heap. The city thrives on its grungy, unkempt image, one that Mayor Klaus Wowereit immortalized in his 2003 comment that Berlin is "poor but sexy." Municipal services are kept at a bare minimum, with garbage often blowing down Berlin's wide boulevards and sidewalks left covered with ice and snow until the weather changes.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
protective poverty. thats what the Democrats want for America!!
Interestingly enough, I recently read a similar article about (The People’s Republic of) Santa Monica.
Apparently they haven’t permitted any new housing zoning in something like 30 years, and are equally stringent about any new enterprise so as a result of missing the last decade of growth, they aren’t having much of a downturn!
Perhaps we should just freeze the whole world in the stone age. We’d never have to worry about a downward business cycle again!
The goal is to be less active and trapped by regualation that makes us all lazy and unambitious...do a nothing government job and have lot of vacation as the incentive to work harder has no real consequence...
Look at Socialist countries, they end up being so complacent Muslims kick them around and they refuse to even fight back...
Political implications aside, there is some truth to this.
“We didn’t know we were poor back in the Depression years; nobody else we knew had any money, either.” - my mom.
Berlin “No industry. No industrial meltdown.”
Hey, that should protect us too!
One of the benefits of living under communism for 44 years.
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