Bruno Hollnagel, September 18, 2020, European Central Bank – Negative Interest

German Bundestag, September 18, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/177, pp. 22262-22263. 

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

So as to anticipate: It is not for me to question the independence of the ECB. It however, first, may not interfere in the rights of others and, second, must guarantee the proportionality of its means of action and thus keep an eye on the extensive effects of its doings.

In regards interference in the rights of others. In that the German Bundesbank, charged by the ECB, collects negative interest and ultimately pays over the earnings to the state, that practically works as a tax. For that reason, Professor Elicker, in his brief of February 2020, spoke in this relation of a “mechanism which in its effects is equivalent to a special tax”. That is the mechanism which is here being implemented. To parliament alone, however, is given the taxation authority. We ought not to hand over this right.

In regards proportionality. Professor Knops in his opinion of October 2019 wrote of the efficacy of negative interest - I cite: The ECB's measures violate the subsidiarity principle (Art. 5, para. 5, EU Treaty) and the fundamental of proportionality (Art. 5, para. 4, EU Treaty).

In evaluating the proportionality of the ECB’s measures, the following points are especially to be considered:

Zero and negative interest, regarded in economic terms, is absolutely absurd. No one with a healthy common sense would give money to anyone knowing that he is guaranteed to get back less.

It would be more sensible to keep the money under the pillow.

Negative interest has two effects on banks: First, it depresses the overall interest level. The danger thereby increases that the interest received by the banks no longer covers the risks. Second, negative interest robs banks of capital so that they are less in a position to take on risk.

That altogether endangers the financial stability of Germany. Ostensible solutions like associations of liability and synthetic bonds only disguise the situation, yet do not solve the problem.

            Lisa Paus (Greens): Complete rubbish! You should read Frau Schnabel for once!

We all know: Low interest leads to mis-allocations of capital [Kapitalfehllenkungen]. It produces bubbles which later burst and produce great economic damage – for example: Spain.

Too low interest misleads to the taking up of more credit than is healthy. In Germany at the end of 2019, there were on hand 330,000 so-called zombie firms; the Creditreform [debt collection agency] presently speaks of 550,000 zombie firms. That is a firm which, without new credit, is no longer in a position to survive. According to the Creditreform, their number, as a consequence of the lockdown effects, can still climb to 700,000 to 800,000. The sword of Damocles is poised over Germany’s financial sector.

Not only are savers negatively affected by low interest but naturally also insurance companies and pension funds and thus practically all citizens. Too low interest removes the interest rate pressure from the market with the result that, first, economic efficiency declines and, second, the purchase of firms is facilitated; that means: Business concentration.

Overall, it is established that negative interest by means of uneconomic resource allocation produces economic weakness.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am of the opinion: The ECB policy interferes immoderately in the rights of the parliament and that its policy is disproportionate. We must do something to oppose that; for example, in which we in common consider whether we do not reimburse the negative interest.

Thank you.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Michael Espendiller, October 1, 2020, 2021 Budget – Research

German Bundestag, October 1, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/180, pp. 22745-22746.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube.

Today concerns the estimate [Etat] of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research for fiscal year 2021. It is the same for this estimate as for the entire budget: Where is the required consolidation concept? The government delegations of the Union and the SPD make debts, debts and yet more debts and thereby wish to distribute large-scale election gifts in the election year 2021 at the cost of coming generations. That is irresponsible.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): And how!

It is also the case in the field of education and research. The estimate may indeed be 70 million euros smaller than in this year. Yet here are to be discerned no efforts to reduce in any way the new indebtedness or to place for once basically all expenditures under examination. We have no share in this debt orgy.

However we will do our job, Frau Karliczek, and will show with our motions to amend where the money in your estimate is being thrown out the window.

I might be permitted to address two things today. One of which is the national hydrogen strategy to which you indeed have referred. This is the new holy cow in the fight against climate change. This proposal is nothing other than the introduction of an eco-socialist planned economy on Federal German territory.

            Karamba Diaby (SPD): Boring. Always the same terminology. Isn’t that boring?

It should be thought that the CDU and SPD politicians have learned something from their epic failure of breakdowns at the BER airport. Fourteen years construction time, six broken opening dates,

            Yasmin Fahimi (SPD): We are speaking on the Federal budget!

total costs of 6.4 billion euros and thereby three times more expensive than originally planned.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Wrong function!

This story of incompetence shows that the state is not the better businessman.

What has our insane government learned from that? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Since it is desired to now repeat these failures, and this time drive to the wall entire sectors of the economy. Yes, hydrogen will be one of the basic components of a future energy supply.

            Kai Gehring (Greens): How can one with such a logic become a doctor?

Yet that the Federal government itself now wishes to become a businessman will lead to an incineration of money on an unheard of scale. On that account, we demand that Federal government be thrifty here and leave this segment of the market to the private sector.  

The government can willingly invest in basic research on the subject of hydrogen, and it certainly is doing so. Yet on the whole, we invest much too little in basic research. That is indicated especially by the other important subject, the second of which I wanted to address: Nuclear energy. Around the world, there are at this moment improvements in nuclear energy and research into new reactor concepts. Fourth generation nuclear reactors are safer than all previous ones

            Karamba Diaby (SPD): Safer?

and can radically neutralize our disposal problem, by which atomic waste can be used for energy production.

Yet in Germany, none dare approach this taboo. Not one of you allowed research to be permitted in the field. All of you here close your eyes to the giant potentialities which can make our energy supply clean, safe and advantageous for all.

           Vice-president Claudia Roth: Herr colleague, do you allow an interim question                                            or remark?

The same as a brief intervention. I would prefer now to continue.

            Vice-president Claudia Roth: Good.

You do all that out of pure angst and ideological delusion.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): Of your delegation?

We of the AfD Bundestag delegation are clearly in favor of nuclear power and new reactor research.

And we are the only ones who see it so. It was the former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of the SPD who said the following – I cite:             

I find it astonishing that among all the great industrial states of the world – from the U.S.A. to China, Japan and Russia – the Germans are the only ones who believe they could get along without nuclear power. We have practically given up our coal mining, we have as good as no oil in the ground and nothing off our coasts. It is therefore obvious that Germany is to obtain part of its energy from nuclear power.  

            Götz Frömming (AfD): A good man!               

            René Röspel (SPD): Out of an old newspaper!

That comes from the former SPD chancellor. We should all think over these words and be more open to and courageous in research.

Many thanks for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Martin Hohmann, October 1, 2020, 2021 Budget – Justice

German Bundestag, October 1, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/180, pp. 22647-22648. 

Right honorable Herr President. Honorable Frau Minister. Dear colleagues.

The Justice Ministry is responsible for the examination and lawful execution of statutes. To that extent, it is obliged to be an office of watchmen. And not a few statutory initiatives emanate from the Justice Ministry. We have even heard some announcements in this line from the mouth of the minister.

In the Corona crisis, unexpected, highly charged questions have been presented for careful consideration. What is a single life worth? It was decided that the potential endangerment of a life outweighs any economic damage. This judgment permits one other question, which in everyday practice and execution of the law has long since been decided, to appear in a new light. I am thinking of the question of §218 of the penal code [termination of pregnancy]. It will surprise you that I, similar to the forces on the left of the spectrum, want to here plead for an abolition of this provision, albeit from a different perspective.

I have a wish to make, a dream, that a process of re-thinking and of re-cognition presents itself in a new self-understanding which may make §218 superfluous. This understanding is primarily shaped by seeing the prospects with which each new life is invested. In the Gospel of John it says, “…I am come that they might have life and have it abundantly”. From this abundance may be expected a new Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or a new Mother Teresa. This abundance preserves an optimistic view of the future. Yes, it vests in us.

Yes, we can bring about a change. In that regard, it may help to consider that what we have received as a gift, what we in abundance enjoy, life, we may not withhold from people in its early stages. It is a question of justice. The same prospect pertains to each life from the beginning. It is therefore necessary to place empathy for life at the center, in the home, in the schools, in all public life. As a people we are also required to solve our problems with our own powers and not by the poaching of people from other countries or continents.

            Mechthild Rawert (SPD): Are you speaking of the skilled labor shortage?

Consider next week: Sustainable policy. If we in this way discover anew the value of unborn life and prepare more strongly than previously the public resources for this duty of the future, then may an optimism be brought about.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am in principle disinclined to involve my own family and personal surroundings in politics, in political work. Today I want to make an exception with the following, concluding picture: About a year ago, I was sitting in the early evening at home at the kitchen table reading. I heard the approach of little steps outside the kitchen door. Slowly, the door handle was pressed down. My three year old granddaughter – she lives with her family on the floor above – came in. I turned to her. She came near. She stood before me, we looked at one another. She lay her hand and her little head on my knee. I stroked her hair.

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): Say, it’s good now!

We glanced again at one another. She went to the door, left the room and closed the door. There was not a word during this brief scene.

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): Embarrassing! Something so embarrassing!

Dear colleagues, this encounter fills me to this day with a deeper, more creaturely gratitude.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): What might your granddaughter say when she reads                                                    your speech?

I wish you all similar fortunate, blessed moments. I want to suggest a corresponding initiative of new reflection.

Thanks.

 

 

 

[trans: tem]

Björn Höcke, September 30, 2020, Moria

Thüringen Landtag, September 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 7/24, pp. 11-12. 

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen in the sovereign House and at the screens.

On September 7, asylum lobbyists arranged 13,000 empty chairs in front of the Reichstag building and, under the motto “We Have a Place”, demanded the dissolution of the Greek camps in Moria and the immediate acceptance of the immigrants living there. Two days later, the camp will be set afire, the establishment media bringing forth the familiar pictures of women and children. That 85 percent of the inhabitants are young men will not be mentioned. The reporting will be flanked by “We Have a Place” demonstrations in the larger cities.

            Henfling (Greens): It is about human rights and not about women and                                                        children’s rights!

Who here speaks of a professionally realized staging in the service of moral extortion will certainly not be entirely wrong. Yet, for the leading heads behind this extortion, is it really about refugees? Sea Watch captain Pia Klemp expressing herself concerning her work in the British Guardian – cite: “It is not about a humanitarian rescue at sea. It is part of the anti-fascist struggle”. Will migration thus perhaps be employed as a weapon against the bürgerliche order? In any case, migration by the millions from the Arab and African area is destabilizing the Western nations. In Sweden, a humanitarian major power, the country’s vice-chief of police, in regards the undermining of the state by the gangs, speaks of a “systemic threat” and

            Henfling (Greens): He appears to be speaking of the AfD!

the social-democratic foreign minister Margot Wallström, in office until 2019, prophesied of the continuing immigration – I cite verbatim: “In the long term, our system will collapse”. For all that, in Sweden the rule of political correctness is now collapsing and I wish that also for Germany.

In Germany meanwhile we have concrete bollards around the Christmas markets, an event-oriented party people scene which at times happily smashes to bits entire streets and likewise a clan criminality scarcely mastered by our police. Non-Germans in Thüringen are over-represented as suspects for theft by four times, for dangerous bodily injury by six times and for sexual assault by almost eight times. Today we gather from the press that in the Free State the number of Islamists posing a threat has significantly increased. Despite that, the Herr Minister-president recently sounded off in the Zeit that we would have a place and that Germans want the distribution of immigrants from Moria. No, right honorable Minister-president, we have a housing crisis, we have exploding rental prices, we are one of the most densely settled countries in the world – we have no place!

And the majority of Germans, the majority of Thüringers as well, want no second 2015 and they want no further loss of control, since they know: First Moria burns and then burns our society.

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, responsible politicians in Germany and Thüringen are making ready to declare as wards of the state Taliban, Isis fighters, Somali pirates and arsonists and concede to them a right to reside in the country, and that even though people are much more likely to be threatened, to be molested and even be killed by these types, and according to no aspect of a European standard of values are they worthy of protection. The ultimate argument of the immigration apologists is that it is human dignity – I believe the term has again been shouted through the sovereign House –  

            Henfling (Greens): No, human rights. Yet that is foreign to you, as we                                                        already know.

which must be protected.

I must here in conclusion be very clear: Yes, human dignity rightly stands before all in our Basic Law. No, right honorable worthy colleagues, a right of residence for serious criminals was not intended by the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law when they formulated Article 1 following the horrific experiences of the dictatorship. The political instrumentalization of human dignity on behalf of criminals and mass immigration threatens the state and must be stopped.

Many thanks for your attention.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

Tino Chrupalla, October 2, 2020, 30 Years German Unity

German Bundestag, October 2, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/181, pp. 22754-22755. 

Right honorable Herr President. Dear guests. Dear countrymen.

As most here know, I was born in the DDR. As a child of Lausitz, I know and esteem my Heimat. I spent the first years of my life in a country which placed the political system above the wishes of the people.  We were surveilled and browbeaten so as to further maintain the socialist ideology. I was 15 years old at the end of the DDR. Practically over-night I could get to know the freedom for which the people had yearned: The freedom to express my opinion and to be allowed to associate with others.

Ladies and gentlemen, today I can say: I am a child of German unity, born in Lausitz. What then was the DDR? Many people of the old Federal Republic associate it with an oppressed, walled-in people. Yet the DDR was more. It was also solidarity and community – in the city and in the country, in private life as at work. There was no luxury, yet therefore much readiness to help. I know for many western Germans that tends to sound like a paradox. And, what is more, I understand them. We were in the years of separation distinctively coined. It is nevertheless clear to me that you too know the value of a society in which one feels at home. Mitmenschlichkeit survived primarily in private life: In the family, in the circle of friends, at the workplace. It was heartfelt and honorable. It is just this Mitmenschlichkeit that is missed by many today.

Materially, almost everything is better.Yet for long not all feel themselves to be better. In fact, many people today feel themselves left alone with their cares and needs. Loneliness has become a theme which earlier was not so with us. We should ask ourselves why, after 30 years of unity, that is so.

Many people feel themselves to be dependent and that is not without a reason. The economic power of the east remained at barely 73 percent of the total German average. And still today – after 30 years – the average income in eastern Germany is around 20 percent less than in the west. Since taking our seats in the Bundestag, we refer ever again to the poverty threatening all eastern German pensioners. And we also say to you how we can in the future prevent such pensions: We need a special, eastern economic zone so that finally after 30 years the standard of living in both parts of Germany may be equalized as is guaranteed in the Basic Law.

Yet what do you do, worthy ladies and gentlemen on the government bench? Why do you not better use our strengths and capabilities? Do you remember the words of the Germans in November 1989, “We are one people”? Besides, it is astonishing that the Chancellor fails to be at such a debate.

Why do you play with the people’s angst when you ascribe a rightist extremism to us eastern Germans? Even a Federal President, who actually must know better, speaks of “Dunkeldeutschland”. And quite without embarrassment, you breathe new life into the old, divisive DDR propaganda of anti-fascism. This propaganda then and today was and is an instrument of the devil.

We should remind ourselves how it felt when plurality of opinion was undesired and thought prohibitions were the standard of political judgement. What I want to say is: We should remind ourselves how it was when anyone who advocated an opinion other than that of the government was declared an enemy of the state. “Never again” should today be our credo as democrats.

Ladies and gentlemen, each person will be stamped with the experiences which he has undergone. I myself therefore understand the time of 30 years ago as the terminal point of common negotiations. The BRD and the DDR had negotiated for Germany. The unification of the two German states brought together our countrymen from all points of the compass. It was a patriotic act.

From precisely that my party also derives the power for its negotiations. We are the first party in the German Bundestag to have originated in re-unified Germany. We are free of the ideological ballast of the time prior to unification [Vorwendezeit]. We can therefore look back with complete lack of bias on the events of that time. And that I can here and today speak to you, I have alone to thank the courage of the people of the east. They risked everything for freedom and fought for their country.

It is therefore a heart’s desire to thank all these people here and today for their courage. They had the great good fortune to make possible the re-unification. I therefore request you all: Let us safeguard the gift of unity with the power of reason which makes it possible for all people to be able to lead a life of freedom, and thus a political life without exclusion and stigmatization or indeed persecution – even when we do not share the opinion of others.

Many thanks.

 

 

[trans: tem]