Free Republic

Donald Trump’s banking information has formally been turned over to Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating whether the president’s campaign conspired with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election. Deutsche Bank, the German bank that serves as Trump’s biggest lender, was forced to submit documents about its client relationship with the president and some of his family members, who are also Deutsche clients, after Mueller issued the bank with a subpoena for information, according to multiple media reports. The news was first reported by Handelsblatt, the German newspaper.

In view of the events in Ukraine, the government and many media have switched from level-headed to agitated. The spectrum of opinions has been narrowed to the width of a sniper scope. The politics of escalation does not have a realistic goal – and harms German interests. ___ Düsseldorf. Every war is accompanied by a kind of mental mobilization: war fever. Even smart people are not immune to controlled bouts of this fever. “This war in all its atrociousness is still a great and wonderful thing. It is an experience worth having“ rejoiced Max Weber in 1914 when the lights...

Yesterday, a reader told me about a must-read article in the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt. Having no details other than it was a"must read" I failed to locate the article after attempting translations of the Handelsblatt home page. Zero Hedge did find the article, entitled "West on the Wrong Path". It turns out, there is a version of the editorial in German, English, and Russian. Citing parallels to WWI, author Gabor Steingart, publisher of Handelsblatt, Germany’s leading financial newspaper, blasts the Western response (especially US and German) response to the situation in Ukraine. "Small Price to Pay" vs. "West on...

General Dynamics to beat out Germany for Saudi tank deal-report (Reuters) - U.S. defence firm General Dynamics is in talks to deliver battle tanks to Saudi Arabia, beating out German rival Krauss-Maffei Wegmann for the lucrative deal, a German newspaper reported. Handelsblatt daily cited industry sources as saying on Friday that a deal for Saudi Arabia to buy M1 Abrams tanks from General Dynamics was already in sight. General Dynamics and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann were not immediately available for comment. There has been speculation for months that Saudi Arabia could order more than 200 Leopard 2 tanks from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, though...