Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux

[Iormlund]

The prototype pictures I saw of the of the 2012 (or 13?) SLK so far suggest that the nose will look much more like the SLS. A flat nose like in the current SLK is not really compatible with EU pedestrian protection rules. I wonder how companies like Lamborghini solve that...

Aren't most if not all Lambos middle-engined? That would allow to keep enough distance from the hood to any hard surface.

Other than that the silouette looks similar to the current SLK as far as I can tell:

But if you don't like long engine compartments, why do you like the SLS? It has a much longer engine compartment than the current SLK.

I love the front of the SLS, I just don't like that it is so ... unbalanced. way too long up front, very short behind. Middle-engined cars don't have that problem.

Anyway, I'm a small roadster kind of guy, so a mini-SLS would work great.

[Admiral Yi]

Hardtop roadsters look kind of weird to me.  Like Honda Del Sols.

[Iormlund]

Spain's curve is easily explained by the housing bubble. Notice how figures are down immediately after it burst. Salaries have taken a sharp dive since.

The bubble also swallowed any increase in salaries during the last decade, by the way. Many, many people are tied to dubious property and ridiculous mortgages. The extent of our woes will become clear only when Germany decides to raise interest rates again. And then there's the fact that the entire construction sector has been wiped out and we've got no way of employing several million of people without any kind of useful skill.

On the bright side there is so much inefficiency that the potential for improvement is consequently great. 

[Zanza]

Aren't most if not all Lambos middle-engined? That would allow to keep enough distance from the hood to any hard surface.

Yes, but the hood is still very low, meaning knees and legs will get hurt. I think the EU wants higher noses for cars so that the pedestrian is hit in the upper part of his legs. And the hood of a Lambo is very short, so that a pedestrian's head would hit the windscreen, not some deformable part of the hood.

A lot of modern cars have a system like this Jaguar XK, where the hood is raised on impact to give the pedestrian a better chance to survive. That would not really work in a Lambo design.

I love the front of the SLS, I just don't like that it is so ... unbalanced. way too long up front, very short behind. Middle-engined cars don't have that problem.

Actually, the SLS is almost middle engined, weight distribution is like 47:53 or so - that's why it has such a long hood. The engine is mostly behind the front axle. But the real reason of course is that they wanted to copy the silouette of the 1954 300 SL.

[Zanza]

The extent of our woes will become clear only when Germany decides to raise interest rates again.

Last I checked, Germany couldn't make such decisions without having several other countries supporting them.

[Admiral Yi]

Last I checked, Germany couldn't make such decisions without having several other countries supporting them.

Do you mean to tell me you guys actually vote on monetary policy?  I thought the ECB was independent with an inflation fighting mandate.

[Zanza]

Yes, we do. The directors of the ECB are from the member countries and vote on monetary policy with simple majorities. They are appointed but otherwise independent from their governments. As far as I know, voting weight is by contributed capital. So Germany has about 27% of the votes.

[MadImmortalMan]

WTF I don't give a crap about pedestrians who jump in front of my car not getting hurt. Especially if I'm driving a Jag. The bastards will know they will be hurt less and also that I am a source of litigation money. 

[Richard Hakluyt]

Greece looks like they were on the right track until they joined the Euro---then blam.

Yes, I was surprised by that too. None of the other countries has such a spike in the graph. I wonder why Greece was special. Did they have a +15% raise of all salaries in 2002 or what?

The old Drachma was a pretty soft currency. The Greeks would award themselves a 10% payrise and their currency would promply decline 10%. No change in their competitiveness vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

When they switched to the Dm, er......euro, they carried on with the 10% rises and borrowed money to fund the gap at German rates. In recent visits to Greece I was astounded at the extent of their delusion that they had become a front-rank economy. The balance of payments deficit is something like 13%............amazing.

[Josquius]

The economic stuff is interesting, is that at least right even if the whole ev0l germans thing isn't?
German labour is...cheaper than Greek....

[Syt]

Yes, I was surprised by that too. None of the other countries has such a spike in the graph. I wonder why Greece was special. Did they have a +15% raise of all salaries in 2002 or what?

Was that when they started including gambling, money laundering etc. in the GDP?

[Martim Silva]

The balance of payments deficit is something like 13%............amazing.

12,7%, to be precise.

But note that the latest UK budget predicts a 12,6% public deficit for 2010/2011, so Greece is hardly alone.

And Portugal is not much better off - with only 9,3% deficit we're better at hiding budget holes than the Greeks, but we're also pretty much bankrupt. And France expectis its own deficit to increase this year to 8,5% of GDP.

Things are still up in the air about Spain and Italy - it is a matter of confidence by the markets, and that confidence will only be kept as long as the EU bails out countries who have fiscal problems.

Everyone is basically relying on the Germans - the only ones who have any sense of responsibility - to foot the ultimate bill, should push come to shove.

Which of course begets the question that these bailouts may strain the German budget so much that Germany too will have its troubles... the small nations can be bailed out temporarily.

Who will bail out the big ones?

As for the article, while fears of German hegemony have risen periodically in the last decades, there is a more disturbing truth behing all the fear-mongering. And that is that many problems that Germany faced during WW2 are, in fact, true European problems, regardless of ideology.

Like it or not, Europe:

- Has little oil/energy of its own;

- Is locked between two large powers (the US and Russia), and can face trouble if it antagonizes both at once - and I don't even mean militarily; both blocs could cripple us economically if they set themselves to it.

- Has few "natural" allies [i.e. nations with compatible geopolitical interests] in the world.

- Britain, Poland and Sweden are less than enthusiastic about European unity, and do represent a problem regarding full european integration.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Britain's balance of payments deficit is only 1.1%. Though you are correct that the government's deficit is about 13%.

My point here is that Greece has a major problem with it's trade as well as it's domestic arrangements. Britain's trading position is ok and expected to further improve; our problems are largely confined to shrinking an over-large public sector. This won't be pleasant, but it is not in the same league of problems that the Greeks face.

[garbon]

MSil keep on being you.

[Razgovory]

MSil keep on being you.

It is a special brand of idiocy that's hard to replicate.