hanks, autobahn, cloud atlas…

Fabulous video (from Pino) with Tom Hanks philosophying on Germany, Berlin and Eisenhüttenstadt…and Autobahn!

Well done

Well done…since 2 months I see this stupid campaign “don’t be a maybe” at my Stadtbahn stop. Now an Unknown Artist, blogged on FB by Street Art Hamburg  did this fabulous détournement. Thanks Pino for sharing!!

This is Berlin. Better a Polish cigarette than these tired tricks, innovative among Mad Men fifty years ago.

Angela the Great Misunderstood

I don’t know…to me what Merkel says makes a lot of sense. Is it so hard to understand that in its selfish dreams Germany also needs demand and growth in the Rest of Europe in order to be able to power ahead with its exports, and not a weaker Europe? And that a growth fuelled by printing banknotes or bailing out ships threading water by writing white cheques would be a catastrophe, especially for the weakest economies?

Budget discipline means collecting taxes from those who should pay them, spending on the right projects with have something similar to a ROI and not idiot infrastructure like the Ponte sullo Stretto or decorative kerbs in Spain, supporting the right kind of welfare: the one that enables workers in declining industries to acquire new skills, not nepotist public (or private) low productivity sector jobs. And the unions’ objective should be to negotiate good terms without putting the country on its knees on one side and becoming themselves a protected kast on the other side?

But everybody knows that the nations’ daddies are those who promise gifts, play football and masquerade as Santa. And good moms are those who enforce math homework, room cleaning and spinach eating. There are still gender stereotypes in Europe, and women are the ones which make things work in 80% of cases. More balanced roles would be preferable, but the math exams are tomorrow, the vitamine count is low, kids are panicking and distracted, so someone’s got to keep the pieces together. You’ll get the ice cream, but first eat your greens.

More on Davos here.

Berlin career

The cheeky video is nice…and I really hope that Berlin can boost its employment rate. For sure the quality of life for young people studying or starting their career is higher than all other European’s cities. But job opportunities are still scarce, as Berlin is probably the German city which exports less among other Länder. Still it imports a lot of travellers, art lovers, fashion professionals thanks to the fashion week and Bread and Butter, music producers, movie professionals…this is always a good start. Then, the “boring jobs” in finance, legal, accounting, will follow.

There’s something about Fritz

All bookstores in our street show biographies, history tomes and magazines covering the hot topic of 2012: Frederick the Great, aka “Der alte Fritz”, born in 1712.

I don’t exclude to delve more in the story of the great man, especially after having listened a few years ago to a beautiful radio broadcast by one of the most entertaining Italian historians, Alessandro Barbero. You can find all episodes on Radio 2.

Barbero tells us about his aggressive warfare impetus, his 16 wars, 13 won and 3 lost, his love for the arts and his friendship with Voltaire and Bach. But even more about the loneliness of Frederick, triggered with the events of Küstrin.

Source: Der Spiegel

The Bund Trader

Every morning I check the Bund quotes. I’m always long, never short…

Frugal elegance

The Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf: one of those 50s architectural bijoux, “rund und bunt”. Staircases in the 50s were status symbols. Nowadays only private residences and flagship stores still show off their stairs, back then the backbone of corporate headquarters and institutional building were those banisters, those spirals.

bauhaus perforé

Berlin Fashion Week…I love Eva&Bernard perforated fabric and leather. Would like to see a bit more of it actually.

Source: Courtesy of IMG Fashion / InDigital

The Davos matrix

Globalization risk in a nutshell means a higher domino-effect. 2011 saw a wild bunch of black swans flocking from environmental and technological disasters like Fukushima and oil tanker spills to societal ones in London, from the environmental and urbanization problems of Liguria and Thailand to the geopolitical ones in Syria and Iran.

Have a look to the World Economic Forum’s matrix of risks (likelihood/impact) across regions and spanning across societal, economic, geopolitical, environmental and technological risks.

The US has a higher risk in cyber attacks and critical systems failure, in line with a higher terrorism likelihood. All regions score high in water and food supply shortage, Europe included. Failure of climate change adaptation score highest in USA, followed by Europe and Asia. Severe income disparity is higher in the Americas compared with Europe and Asia. Pervasive entrenched corruption is higher in South America, Sub-Saharian Africa vs North Africa and ME, the US follow, Europe is less hit and curiously Asia scores low. On chronic fiscal imbalances the US score higher than Europe.

For a global view have a look at the gravity (risk eye of the storm?) map. The diffusion of weapon of mass destruction scores low, as unexpected risks stemming from nanotechnology. Unmanageable inflation and deflation are also estimated to be relatively lower risks than religious fanaticism.

One major stakeholder is missing: populations. Especially when the highest ranking risks are food and water supply shortage…

I am curious to see what Merkel will say at Davos’ opening speech.

Dusseldorf am Wharton

We’ve been long term fans of the Wharton University papers and over the past 10 years they provided always good food for thought. I still have somewhere a printout of an article appeared in the mid-2000s on how Germany was changing, against conventional wisdom spread by the usual mainstream media of being the sick man of Europe and an un-cool country. The Wharton insights were confirmed a few years down the road – by reality.

Today I noticed that the city of Dusseldorf is also an active sponsor on these pages. I am not surprised, from a city who has in its own website pages in English, Russian, Chinese and Japanese.