The Debatable Land

Kids These Days...

Coming to a Christmas cinema screen near you next year.

It is a dream that has been shared by lovers across the centuries – the chance to elope to exotic lands. But few would have been as bold and spontaneous as six-year-old Mika and his five-year-old sweetheart Anna-Bell who, after mulling over their options in secret, packed their suitcases on New Year's Eve and set off from the German city of Hanover to tie the knot under the heat of the African sun.

The children left their homes at dawn while their unwitting parents were apparently sleeping, and took along Mika's seven-year-old sister, Anna-Lena, as a witness to the wedding.

Donning sunglasses, swimming armbands and dragging a pink blow-up lilo and suitcases on wheels packed with summer clothes, cuddly toys and a few provisions, they walked a kilometre up the road, boarded a tram to Hanover train station and got as far as the express train that would take them to the airport before a suspicious station guard alerted police.

"What struck us was that the little ones were completely on their own and that they had lots of swimming gear with them," said Holger Jureczko, a police spokesman. He described Mika and Anna-Bell as "sweethearts" who had "decided to get married in Africa where it is warm, taking with them as a witness Mika's sister".

Anna-Bell told the German television station RTL: "We wanted to get married and so we just thought: 'Let's go there.' "

Mika said: "We wanted to take the train to the airport, then we wanted to get on a plane and when we arrived we wanted to unpack the summer things and then we wanted to go for a bit of a stroll in the sun."

Of course, Hollywood will doubtless botch the whole thing.

[Hat-tip: RF in NJ, via Facebook]

Economic Policy Trust Test: Labour or the Germans?

A good old-fashoned rumpus is developing. Seems as though the Germans, fed up with being sneered at by Godron Brown and irritated by the Prime Minister's pretensions to have "saved the world" have decided to poke the PM in the eye. As Peer Steinbruck, the SPD Finance Minister told Newsweek:

We have a bidding war where everyone in politics believes they have to top up every spending program that's been put to discussion. I say we should be honest to our citizens. Policies can take some of the sharpness out of it, but no matter how much any government does, the recession we are in now is unavoidable. When I look at the chaotic and volatile debate right now, both in Germany and around the world, my impression and concern is that the daily barrage of proposals and political statements is making markets and consumers even more nervous.

The speed at which proposals are put together under pressure that don't even pass an economic test is breathtaking and depressing. Our British friends are now cutting their value-added tax. We have no idea how much of that stores will pass on to customers. Are you really going to buy a DVD player because it now costs £39.10 instead of £39.90? All this will do is raise Britain's debt to a level that will take a whole generation to work off. The same people who would never touch deficit spending are now tossing around billions. The switch from decades of supply-side politics all the way to a crass Keynesianism is breathtaking. When I ask about the origins of the crisis, economists I respect tell me it is the credit-financed growth of recent years and decades. Isn't this the same mistake everyone is suddenly making again, under all the public pressure?

It's the yearning for the Great Rescue Plan. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist! Dealing with an unprecedented crisis is a puzzle, a trial-and-error. Honestly, I don't know. I tend to be skeptical because it is human nature to see the crisis as even worse than it is. I don't want to downplay anything; 2009 looks like it will be a very difficult year. But we are not about to collapse.

This is very troubling stuff since it's more or less where my own  - blind - hunch lies. Of course I know very little about economics and have to hope that the German finance minister has a better grip on these matters.

Noteworthy too that Herr Steinbruck is a man of the left. As the BBC's Nick Robinson points out, despite Labour's attempts to spin this as a matter of German domestic politics, it's more probable that the Germans are saying this because they think Britain is trying to lead everyone off a cliff. Let's have a look at today's news: not only has the government run up more debt than was needed to fight and win the First World War, we don't have any money to go abroad either. With the pound approaching parity with the euro, all holidays are now to be taken in Britain.

The next step? Something called "Quantative Easing" which, as best I can tell, is just a fancy term for printing more money. That sounds encouraging, doesn't it?

Always the Germans...

The New Republic, America's most football-friendly political magazine, asked me to write something mean about the Germans:

Today's question then, is: Does Germany's record in international soccer confirm: (a) the absence of God, (b) the capriciousness of justice, or (c) the futility of romance? Or: (d) all of the above?

Full piece here.

Prieviously, in a more generous mood, I defended David Beckham for TNR here.

Ich bin ein hamburger

Do you have what it takes to become a German citizen? I do.

(Like Daniel Larison, I scored 5/7.)

France and Collaboration

As an addition to this post on wartime France, Clive Davis directs one to this Max Hastings op-ed from a couple of years ago that makes similar points:

Hearing a recent conversation about collaboration, I made myself unpopular by suggesting that, if Britain had succumbed to Nazi rule, our own people would have behaved pretty much as the French did. Anthony Eden is seldom quoted with respect these days. Yet the former foreign secretary made an impressive contribution to Marcel Ophüls' great film on wartime France, Le Chagrin et la Pitié. He said, in impeccable French: "It would be impertinent for any country that has never suffered occupation to pass judgment on one that did." Here was wisdom.

It is extraordinarily difficult to resist tyranny ruthlessly enforced, especially in a densely populated country with little wilderness. In order to eat and provide for one's family, it is necessary to earn money. All commerce and industry must be conducted according to the will of the occupiers. A man who owns a business will find that he has no business, his employees no work, if he does not accept dictation. Members of a family that owns a house are liable to find it burnt about their ears if they commit, or are even deemed to have acquiesced in, acts of resistance. Some people may feel brave enough to accept such consequences for themselves, but would they inflict them on their children?

Quite so.

Picture of the Day

Yes, yes, there was a debate between the Democratic candidates in South Carolina tonight. but trust me, this is much more fun:

The AP reports:

An early-morning bank customer had a bit of a shock when he found a horse at the automatic teller machine.

The horse's owner, identified only as Wolfgang H., had a bit too much to drink the night before and decided to sleep it off inside the bank's heated foyer, police said Tuesday.

The 40-year-old machinist told Bild newspaper he had had "a few beers" with a friend in Wiesenburg, southwest of Berlin, and decided to hit the hay in the bank on his way home.

Confronted with the lack of a hitching-post, he brought the 6-year-old horse, named Sammy, in with him.

When a customer came across the horse and sleeping rider in the bank at 4:15 a.m. Monday, he called police, who then came and woke the owner up and sent him on his way.