Is there anything that man can't do?
The forecasts are out for the moribund German economy - which suddenly and conveniently no one can remember was already in the toilet and has been circling for the past two years - and darned if they aren't downright gloomy.
This is alarming for the EU’s economic engine. Germany’s 0% growth forecast highlights deep issues—industrial slowdown, energy costs, and export struggles.
— Geopolitics Now (@x_geopolitics) April 22, 2025
With strained global supply chains, this could drag the entire Eurozone down.
I mean, they're coloring it as 'down to zero' when it was only optimistically predicted to come in at around 0.3% growth at its best anyway.
Shave and a haircut difference, but 'nothing, no growth, nada' is pretty dramatic when you've just sold your soul to the European Union for hundreds of billions of euros in debt service to be determined later.
It's a brilliant bunch they have in charge in that country.
Who might that be?
Well, basically the same losers who got them in this pickle to begin with, only their precedence in a governing coalition has been shaken and stirred - that's all.
The so-called 'right-wing' populist party, which came in second place and has been excluded from any say in what happens in Germany, looks more and more like Obi-Wan Kenobi with every round of polling. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) just keeps getting stronger as Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their coalition partners shiver and stumble along.
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has hit new records in voter surveys.
In the latest poll by Forsa, commissioned by TV channel RTL and published on April 22, the party reached 26 per cent, a gain of more than 5 per cent compared to the February 23 election result.
The right-wingers eclipsed the Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party that won the national ballot with 29 per cent of the vote. It was polling around the 25 per cent mark in the latest survey.
Bad enough with all the broken campaign promises about immigration, debt brakes, and such things. Now there's not even a glimmer of hope on the horizon for some sort of economic resurgence to pull the Germans out of their self-induced economic coma.
Did I say self-induced?
Well, we can't have that, nor any accountability for the chaos and misery caused by Germany's dogged pursuit of climate cult madness.
By massively increasing renewable energy and accelerating the expansion of the electricity grid, we can show” it’s possible to shut nuke plants without jeopardizing energy security, Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck boasted just this year.
— Fear God not Man (@FrantzFrantz15) September 8, 2022
Let's simply say 'Trump did it to them' because you can bet your bippy they will.
US President Donald Trump's tariffs have "significantly" pushed the global economy toward a downshift, reducing the global economic growth forecast for 2025 to 2.8%, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a new report published on Tuesday.
The global growth forecast was expected to stay at 3.1% in 2024 and rise to 3.3% in 2025, said IMF economic counsellor Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas.
...The IMF projects that growth would slow to 0.8% in the Euro area in 2025, and to 1.2% in 2026. Both projections are some 0.2 percentage points down from January.
Germany was set to see economic growth of 0.0% in 2025 and 0.9% in 2026, the IMF said, cutting the European Union's largest economy's growth forecast by 0.3 and 0.2 percentage points, respectively.
It's all downhill.
Good Morning from Germany, where the private sector just shrank for 1st time in 4 months. Acc to S&P Global, the Composite PMI (a key economic indicator) fell to 49.7 in April, dropping below the critical 50 mark that separates growth from contraction.
— Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) April 23, 2025
The services sector was hit… pic.twitter.com/3wSaoeqgIG
Darn Trump.
But deteriorating conditions are also giving rise to fears that the CDU and fellow conspirators may be, in fact, desperate enough to try a move Merz said he wouldn't - banning the populist and very popular AfD.
...None of these considerations apply anymore: Support for banning the AfD is building within both the SPD and the CDU. Much more serious efforts to the ban the party are on the horizon; the Wanderwitz clownshow is yesterday’s foible. The AfD seem increasingly immune to state media propaganda and leftist political agitation.
More important than all of that, however, is the fact that the CDU have proven vastly more incompetent than I or anybody else anticipated. Through their own failures they are making the AfD into the strongest political party of the Federal Republic. Soon they will begin to threaten outright majorities in the East. This was going to happen sooner or later, but the CDU have accelerated the process massively. Things that should’ve taken years are now happening in weeks or months, and that is very dangerous. It is far from inconceivable that the AfD will end up with a Minister President (i.e., a governor) in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or Sachsen-Anhalt following the state elections in 2026. And however that turns out, the 2029 federal elections will be a nightmare. By then the AfD will be so strong that all other parties will have to form the world’s sh**tiest of s**t coalitions to keep them out of power.
The German electorate is restless, and Merz isn't even the chancellor yet.
...The survey results indicated growing dissatisfaction among the German electorate with the incoming coalition government of the CDU and Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Ulrich van Suntum, a Conservative pundit and former AfD politician, wrote on X that the AfD was leading the polls “even though it is being fought to the utmost by CDU, SPD, and Greens at all levels, hounded by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the courts, bullied in the parliaments and defamed and penalised in the leading media on a daily basis”.
“How badly must the policies of Merkel, Scholz, Merz, etcetera be judged by the voters for something like this to be possible? And the voters are right.”
...Many business leaders have criticised the planned coalition measures as not going far enough to lift Germany from its economic malaise.
And now that 'malaise' is predicted to be worse?
...Powerful elements within the SPD, including Saskia Esken, Matthias Miersch and Ralph Stegner, are unwilling to wait. They are demanding that the BfV [Federal office for the Protection of the Constitution] disgorge their precious assessment as soon as possible. The reason is clear: Banning the AfD will involve a years-long complex judicial proceeding at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, and they want to have the AfD good and forbidden before the next federal elections in 2029. There is not much time to spare.
Blaming Trump isn't going to save them, and antsy coalition members know it.
They need the competition taken out before it's too late.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member