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Comment by jgreen10 | Hacker News Reader

Well, Germany has been allowed to act as the emperor with no clothes for a while now; an economic powerhouse sitting on empty pension chests with an ageing population.

To compare pension fund assets:

    US: $46k/capita
    UK: $42k/capita
    Netherlands: $76k/capita
    Germany: $2.9k/capita

http://www.oecd.org/finance/Pension-funds-pre-data-2015.pdf

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Germany does not have such a thing as a pension chest. Pensions are directly paid by the working generation. That has it's problems, but it does also have it's benefits and makes this comparison useless.

> Germany does not have such a thing as a pension chest. Pensions are directly paid by the working generation.

That's only the statutory part though. You are advised to contribute to an occupational and/or private arrangement alongside the statutory scheme. They operate differently.

The underlying problem Germany has is the population dynamics. The population is an ageing one. Lots of people are living longer and not enough children are being born to cover the gap. It might be politically unpopular, but importing refugees and successfully converting them to integrated German tax payers, might well be a long term goal of the state in order to stave off the pensions crisis.

The economic migrants are not going to work and be a tax payers. Even if they wanted to work, there's no work for their qualification. They are going to drain the social support budget and increase the inner pressure in the society.

In the past, 10% of regugees were employed after a year, 50% after 5 years, 70% after 15 years[0]. So it takes a while, unsurprisingly, but your predicitions are not borne out in reality. Of course extrapolating from past experience is just an approximation, so it might take longer; on the other hand there are probably ways to speed up the process.

[0] Figures released by a research institute of the federal government. http://doku.iab.de/aktuell/2015/aktueller_bericht_1514.pdf

Are you really implying that after 15 years, a 30% unemployment rate is a good outcome?

I'm not implying anything. I'm saying that the GP's predictions of 100% unemployment after unspecified amounts of time are unfounded and digging up some more reasonable numbers.

I suppose a good outcome would see the unemployment rate of refugees converge against the unemployment rate of the non-migrant population (vaguely: 7.9%[0]), or more specifically the unemployment rate of those parts of the non-migrant population with similar levels of qualification (vaguely: 13.3%). Because as these levels converge, it makes less and less sense to think of it as a migration issue and more of a more general labor market issue.

[0] Numbers strictly to get a feel for the broad range, the first is the overall unemployment rate in 2011, the second the unemployment rate of people with basic education; unemployment numbers are a rats nest in the best of cases. http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-sit...

> The underlying problem Germany has is the population dynamics.

Actually the fact that wages stopped rising along with the economy as a whole (e.g. less of the generated profits get payed out as wages) seems to play an important role, too.

The retirees represent a cost in absolute numbers (e.g. they are entitled to pension benefits of a certain size). The workforce is collectivly paying out the retirees with a share of their income.

That system works fine even with a declining retiree/workforce ratio (which actually shrinks since at least the 1960s) as long as real wages continue to grow along with GDP and productivity.

Which they don't, and that's a problem.

Germany has a PAYGO mechanism when it comes to pensions (which is incidentally the only crisis-resistant and -adaptive kind of pension system).

Those "pension fund assets" can therefore only be private pension contracts on top of it.

My colleague from Greece has been giddy as a schoolboy about this story all week. Not quite the roaring, thunderous fits of laughter as with the Volkswagen scandal, but this is still developing.

I'm from Germany and the troubles of the Deutsche Bank please me to no end. The only thing I'm scared of is that it will be declared "too big to fail" and bailed out with tax money, while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero".

Maybe he can propose to sell some of the German islands to cover the bailout.

And then let Greece pay for the bailout! Good idea. We get rid of Sylt, and Greece has to pay.

Actually Greece has in a way already paid for a bailout of DB (+ other German & French banks). Just before the (famous?) PSI[1], the Greek state (through retirement funds, universities & other public and semi-public institutions) bought off a lot of (Greek) government bonds from these banks. Then the haircut happened. So instead for these banks to suffer the losses, they were moved to the taxpayer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_involvement

> while at the same time there's no money for schools, police, refugees etc because Wolfgang Schäuble is obsessed with his "black zero".

Schleswig-Holstein just decided to drop any plans for the black zero, and doubled the funding for new police recruits. Additionally, we decided to also build more schools. And fix the infrastructure.

This is similar to saying I hope the nuclear plant blows up but I would really hate it if the government needs to clean it up.

In a way it is already too late.

The scandal is that DB has been allowed to grow this big.

If there is a too big to fail chart, DB will be at the very top of it.

As an Irish person living in Germany (partially as a result of an extremely ill-advised bank bailout), it's quite amusing to watch. I've watched this exact scenario happen in my own country, except with retail "pillar" banks instead of investment banks. I compare bankers to the monarchy of old, they are completely unelected and hold a huge amount of power.

You can be sure that if the shit really hits the fan, Deutsche will be bailed out, no matter the cost. I would bet anything on this happening.

Deutsche will be bailed out, no matter the cost. I would bet anything on this happening.

The bank always wins :-(

Maybe your colleague from Greece should realize that when DB 'falls' tons of people will take the fall for it, regular people like you and me, people who are just trying to make a living, like all those poor fucks in Greece. The group of people taking the fall for it won't be limited to Germany, you can be sure Greeks will feel it as well.

Tell him to just stfu and get back to work.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. For the past 8 years, day in day out you have to hear jokes about how dishonest and unreliable Greeks are, that they caused these problems for us with their cheating, how they should be strictly honest and reliable like Germans, how they shouldn't spend money they don't have and get their finances in order like Germans, and then the Volkswagen scandal happened, and now this. You know, it doesn't involve me at all, but I can imagine why he finds this amusing.

The anti-Greek propaganda in German mainstream media was disgusting.

... and all sane people in Germany condemned them for that.

BTW nobody spoke on the issues of other EU members, like e.g. Greece's northern neighbours Bulgaria and Romania where people live with less than the Greeks during the worst times of their crisis. And all this just because someone somewhere gave carte blanche to the Soviet Union to install pro-communist forces in countries of strategic interest to them where there was almost non-existant communist movement compared to Greece where the UK allegedly intervened so that this won't happen. Just for perspective: people lived comparably good/bad in all three countries before WW2.

As a German, you should know how economically devastated was the DDR after 1989. And bear in mind that it was the best player in the Eastern league of non-representativeness and corruption. (comparisons with the West are another topic altogether)

But quite tame in comparison to Greek media the picturing Merkel with a swastika or the Schäuble cartoon where it was implied he wanted to make soap out of Greek citizens in new concentration camps...

Yeah, tell that dirty lazy Greek to get back to work. They deserve every bit of what happened to them and the debt won't pay by itself.

Such a banking fiasco would never happen in a country filled with precise, punctual, hard-working and responsible light beings such as Germany.

But, I mean, apart from his offensive last line, he has a point. I'm Greek and I wouldn't wish bank failure on anyone, German or not.

The Germans will be ok, don't worry about them, but maybe they'll change their mind about collective guilt now.

I never saw the EU bailouts as handouts from the virtuous to the losers, nor do I see it as an altruistic gift to our friends in need. I see it more as an insurance. Do people whose house isn't on fire want to punish those whose house burned down? No. We all know it could happen to us.

I don't think Germany will need a bailout, but if some day they do, we should do it.

Oh, definitely, but it's still not something to wish on someone. Then again, I guess the colleague was just laughing at the irony, so we aren't all arguing the same point here.

Fact is, it hasn't happened in Germany so far, even in the big financial crisis 2008, all the banks could easily be bailed out by Germany's own public funds. In addition, Deutsche Bank hasn't failed yet, so save your gloating until something actually happeny...

The only difference is that right now the bank is German.

When the banks were Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Irish, the German government didn't give a fuck about the people.

Don't tell us about regular people, we have suffered it since years ago and Merkel just said STFU and fuck off

And don't talking about the moral lessons they gave us. But ohh, the German banks are exactly the same as the other ones

Small correction: "When the banks were Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Irish, the Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish governments didn't give a fuck about the people."

Since you appear to be from one of those countries, you should see how to get more responsible for your choices and look for better representatives to elect. I don't see what's your point about another sovereign country. Everyone has their own problems, let's just focus on ours.

BTW you would be surprised how pissed off were Germans at that time, because every sane person knows the old saying: "Bankers here, bankers there, all the same everywhere." So we (at least not the bigots among us) should be allowed to speak of regular people bearing the cost of such changes, shall they happen, just as we (and YOU) did it when the same thing happened in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

No, your correction is a lie. The ones that didn't give a fuck, didn't want to help and made the crisis worst were the German government and their negative to help because the South countries were just a bunch of people that didn't work, expend too much and deserved all that happen.

>? Since you appear to be from one of those countries, you should see how to get more responsible for your choices and look for better representatives to elect. I don't see what's your point about another sovereign country. Everyone has their own problems, let's just focus on ours.

This must be a fucking joke looking what happened to Greece. When the people elected different government, the German one did what they did.

Precisely! You prove my point. It was the German government and not the regular people in Germany. My "advice" applies to Germany and elsewhere equally as well. The point being, ΣΥΡΙΖΑ won with sweet words, but failed to act upon them, which is a pity. Don't think that just because Merkel gets reelected, everyone from the German nation stays behind all her government does. NO! And there was, is and will be a lot of criticism from the German people for things like this.

So, για όνομα του Θεού, don't fall into the trap the media tries to put us into (for whatever reasons, I don't care). This is not about Germans vs Greeks, it's about the consistently failing banking system around the world. Only when we realise the true nature of the problems at hand, can we deal with them.

Be well and prosperous!

The reason the Spanish and Irish bailouts happened in fact was to protect the "contagion" spreading to the banks of the "core" countries.

Why? Because German and French banks lent huge sums to periphery countries - which is why the bailouts were forced on them.

What you are seeing now is the chickens coming home to roost.

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2012/05/10/financial-contagion...

I could not upvote you more. Eight years of economic war and now that their popularity sinked, politics are afraid that the people could suffer. Seriously?

Portuguese, Spaniards, Greeks... were sold in the slave market for the dirty tricks of banks like this. We'll never know how many Europeans will not born or how many suicides or premature deaths are directly caused by the big scam. So please, politicians, don't illustrate us about suffering when the people don't want to vote you anymore. We'll survive with or without you.

That is because pension is handled differently in germany?

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