German manufacturers are being strangled. The EU is feeling the pinch. Mario Draghi on Monday warned the EU may be staring at ‘slow agony.’
  • cfgaussian
    13·
    5 days ago

    The way to fix it is to get back in Russia’s good graces, tell the US to fuck off, ditch neoliberalism and do what China is doing: massive state directed investment in industry, infrastructure and renewables (with a side of nuclear energy). None of which they are willing to do. And if they think the decline is just going to be a steady “slow agony”, they are also mistaken. Declines happen slow at first but they accelerate more and more as the system breaks down. Things will go very rapidly then.

  • Sodium_nitride
    7·
    5 days ago

    Europe escaped the immediate energy shock that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine better than expected. Prices shot up, but reserves didn’t run out. Countries found new fuel sources. Households, on the whole, kept the heating on, helped by selective industry shutdowns.

    No it did not. Europe just straight up running out of energy was never going to happen. But I fucking hate these shits who pretend as if inflation didn’t go crazy in front of my eyes. These guys get to set their own goals at standards too low to fail.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
      4·
      5 days ago

      Exactly, it’s obvious to anybody with a functioning brain that you can’t just make new energy sources appear out of thin air. Russia was supplying a massive amount of energy to Europe, and then that got cut off. Meanwhile, other energy suppliers didn’t just have a bunch of unused capacity sitting around because why would they. So, the amount of energy Europe could get from other countries was always going to be limited, and what happened in the end is that Europe started buying Russian energy through third parties at a huge markup.

  • Sodium_nitride
    5·
    5 days ago

    Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s top executive, called Draghi’s pitch to accelerate Europe’s green industry “basically the same idea we’re pushing forward.”

    Literally 6 months ago we had an article. This is what it had to say

    Even more of a problem for Europe is that its countries have been cutting back on climate-related investments and increasing defense-related investments. The European Investment Bank (set up in 2019) is, as the Financial Times reported, “under pressure to fund more projects in the arms industry,” while the European Sovereignty Fund—set up in 2022 to promote industrialization in Europe—is going to pivot toward support for military industries. **Military spending, in other words, will overwhelm the commitments to climate investments **

    and she has the gall to pretend as if she is pushing for green investment?