Germany is Running Out of Money And Debt Levels Are Exploding
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner is warning his own government that state finances are quickly growing out of hand, and the government needs to change course and implement austerity measures. However, the dispute over spending is only expected to escalate, with budget shortfalls causing open clashes among the three-way left-liberal coalition running the country.
With negotiations kicking off for the 2025 budget, much is at stake. However, the picture has been complicated after the country’s top court ruled that the government could not shift €60 billion in money earmarked for the coronavirus crisis to other areas of the budget, with the court noting that the move was unconstitutional.
Since then, the government has been in crisis mode, and sought to cut the budget in a number of areas, including against the country’s farmers. Those cuts already sparked mass protests, showcasing how delicate the situation remains for the government.
Lindner, whose party has taken a beating in the polls, is desperate to create some distance from his coalition partners and save his party from electoral disaster. The finance minster says the financial picture facing Germany is dire, and that the budget shortfall will only grow in the coming years if measures are not taken to rein in spending.
“In an unfavorable scenario, the increasing financing deficits lead to an increase in debt in relation to economic output to around 345 percent in the long term,” reads the Sustainability Report released by his office. “In a favorable scenario, the rate will rise to around 140 percent of gross domestic product by 2070.”
Under EU law, Germany has limited its debt levels to 60 percent of economic output, which requires dramatic savings. A huge factor is Germany’s rapidly aging population, with a debt explosion on the horizon as more and more citizens head into retirement while tax revenues shrink and the social welfare system grows — in part due to the country’s exploding immigrant population.
Lindner’s partners, the Greens and Social Democrats (SPD), are loath to cut spending further, as this will harm their electoral chances. In fact, Labor Minister Hubertus Heil is pushing for a new pension package that will add billions to the country’s debt, which remarkably, Lindner also supports.
The SPD is calling for the removal of the country’s debt brake to fund large investment projects, however, the FDP ran on a campaign of keeping the brake in place. It can only be removed if the coalition government votes accordingly, and the FDP is adamant it will not vote to remove the brake.
“It must be clear: you cannot buy growth with new debt,” FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr told Swiss newspaper NZZ. “Instead, we have to initiate structural reforms to address the economic policy failures of the Union-led federal governments.”
The FDP wants to cut taxes and reduce regulations, a move sharply rejected by the Greens and SPD.
“The budget discussions will be much more strenuous compared to 2024 – perhaps even the most difficult that I have experienced so far in my time as a parliamentarian,” said SPD leader Lars Klingbeil.
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Russian Forces Destroy Base of Al-Tanf Militants in Syria
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russian aerospace forces wreaked havoc on a base of Al-Tanf militants sheltering in Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor governorate, Vadim Kulit, deputy head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria, said on Saturday, adding that the terrorists suffered significant losses.
“On March 15, Russian aerospace forces carried out a strike on the base of militants who left the Al-Tanf zone and sheltered in hard-to-reach areas of the Jebel Bishri mountain range in the Deir Ez-Zor governorate. As a result, the terrorists suffered significant losses in material assets and manpower,” Kulit said.
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Breaking: Deep State Bloodbath Hoax Awakens Sleeping Giant
Alex Jones and guest, attorney Viva Frei, discuss the media spin of Donald Trump’s use of the term ‘bloodbath’ during his Sunday show.
“So, that is a corporate term, I’ve heard it all my life watching CNBC, reading the Wall Street Journal,” Jones said. “When a company loses big it’s called a bloodbath.”
Jones explains how Trump was clearly talking about the U.S. auto industry.
“When you say that someone is going to violently kill people in the streets if they don’t get elected, you created an existential threat,” Frei said.
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‘I Don’t Have a Girlfriend so I Was Forced to Rape!’ – Congolese Migrant to Stand Trial For Triple Rape of Pensioners And a Schoolgirl
A Congolese migrant due to stand trial in France for the double rape of two elderly hospital patients and the rape of a minor two days later has claimed that because he does not have a girlfriend he is “forced” to rape.
Ali Gandega, 28, was arrested in September 2022 after entering the Max-Fourestier Hospital in Nanterre on July 27 and sexually assaulting a 78-year-old patient in bed before fleeing to another ward on the premises and raping a 68-year-old woman suffering from a neurodegenerative disease just minutes later.
Video footage from the hospital showed the abuse suffered by the two elderly victims and DNA evidence taken after his arrest linked him to another rape, this time a 12-year-old girl, that occurred two days later in the same city.
Le Parisien reported how the man had used scaffolding to enter the child’s bedroom window before strangling and molesting her.
At a police interview, Gandega reportedly told officers that he only wanted to “make love” and that he had initially entered the hospital with a view to raping babies, leading to questions about his mental capacity to stand trial.
French media reported how, when Gandega was in police custody, he explained that because he didn’t have a girlfriend, he was “forced” to rape.
“I decided not to ask anymore … and to do what I had to do,” he is cited as saying.
Born in the Republic of Congo, the suspect joined his siblings in France at the age of 18 but soon became addicted to drugs and refused to work, leading to his sisters throwing him out and him becoming homeless.
During his pre-trial detention, Gandega was relocated from a prison to a secure psychiatric facility and has reportedly become a recluse, refusing to leave his prison cell for interrogations.
He did, however, at one point reportedly attempt to rape a fellow patient or inmate.
Despite being diagnosed as psychotic, an expert psychiatric report has recommended that he is fit to stand trial for the crimes, and an indictment order was filed on Jan. 30 for a trial later this year at the Hauts-de-Seine Criminal Court.
Gandega faces up to 20 years in prison for the offenses.
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Which European Countries Are Most Dependent on US Gas?
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier cautioned that the EU’s decision to stop the purchase of Russian energy supplies was “absolutely political” and would backfire on the bloc.
Every tenth cubic meter of gas used by the EU in 2023 was supplied by the US, with Lithuania the most dependent on the fuel, Sputnik researchbased on data from the UN platform Comtrade and the International Energy Agency has revealed.
According to the findings, the EU’s gas consumption stood at 330 billion cubic meters last year, 20% less than in 2021.
The US supplied 34.5 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG), or 10.4% of all gas consumed by the bloc in 2023, with Finland, which didn’t buy US gas in 2021, consuming 38,2% last year.
As for Lithuania, it consumed a record 40% of the American gas last year, against 22.3% in 2021.
The research also revealed that an array of other countries increased US gas supplies in 2023, including Croatia, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Poland, Italy and Germany. With 32%, Croatia proved to be the most dependent on US gas after Lithuania and Finland. The only countries that reduced American gas deliveries last year were Greece, Malta and Portugal.
The research comes after a previous Sputnik review of Eurostat data showed that EU countries had to pay some €185 billion ($201 billion) extra on natural gas over the past 20 months after cutting themselves off from cheap Russian pipeline gas.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin earlier warned that the EU’s “suicidal” and politically motivated decision to halt the purchase of Russian energy supplies as part of Western sanctions would come back to bite the bloc.
“Rejection of Russian energy resources means that Europe will systematically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world…This will seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is already losing the competition to companies in other regions of the world,” Putin underscored.
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Which Countries Have a Legal Cannabis Market?
Non-medical cannabis sales are forecast to surge by around 74 percent in the United States between 2024 and 2028, increasing from $20.2 billion to $35.1 billion.
This is according to estimates calculated on July 2023 by analysts at Statista Market Insights and is based on the 11 countries in which cannabis was fully or partially legalized in around the world.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, the U.S. is already the biggest market for non-medical legal cannabis worldwide.
It is forecast to expand to become almost seven times bigger than the next largest market, neighboring Canada.
Canada has a sizeable market considering that the drug’s use for recreational purposes only became legal across the country on October 17, 2018.
As the chart above shows, Cannabis will soon be legally available in Germany too, with possession and cultivation of the plant for personal consumption legal for adults as of April 1, 2024.
It will not be the sole market in Europe either, with the Netherlands and Spain both projected to see growth in the next four years.
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