Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, December 9, 2021, Social Consequences of Inflation

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/6, p. 251.

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Right honorable Herr President. Esteemed citizens.

After a months-long inactivity of the old government, we have since yesterday a new Federal government, a government which indeed grandly proclaims to be a so-called government of the future, yet which blatantly blanks out the entire present and sets its priorities elsewhere. Of course while the inflation in Germany reaches the highest level in almost 30 years, thought in the coalition is given to the release of cannabis, a feminist foreign policy, the granting of citizenship to any who come to Germany, etc., etc. The term “inflation” however appears in the whole of the coalition contract one, single time.

Thereby the price explosion which we certainly are experiencing, primarily in Germany, is the poisoned inheritance of the Merkel coalition, with energetic support of the Greens. Taxes and duties in Germany are at a most high level, and the just so senseless as sinfully expensive CO₂ pricing heats up the inflation. For many families in the country, it will be a sad Christmas in which it need be decided whether the house will be heated or instead food or gifts be purchased. The situation is serious and acute, yet the government does not take it seriously.

We presently have in Germany an official inflation rate of 5.2 percent. What does that mean? Everything becomes more expensive, correct. Yet also the saved money becomes devalued, the old age care contribution, all loses value – 5.2 percent in this year. When anyone, for example, has 20,000 euros in the bank, then those 20,000 euros in the course of a year by means of inflation are worth 1,000 euros less. These are the real effects of inflation. The rich have no problem with inflation. They have invested in real estate and equities which grow along with inflation. Businesses have no problem with inflation, since they simply pass on the higher costs of production to the consumers. States have no problem with inflation. They even find inflation to be a good thing. Ultimately disappear at the same time the savings of their own citizens and their own debts.

It is inconceivable to me how a party like the SPD, which in sermons continually troubles itself over the cares of the little people, simply cold-shoulders this powerful problem. Die Ampel [traffic light coalition] has betrayed and sold the little people.

So ugly is this, and of this we must speak. We must however not only speak but we must act, not in sometime in the coming years but here and now. Our motion [Drucksache 20/191] shows how it goes. We thereby move no money from the left pocket to the right, by which we initially remove taxes from the people and then a portion of which grandiosely again apportion, but relieve the citizens immediately and appreciably by means of tax reductions: An abolition of the wretched CO₂ tax whereby energy does not endlessly become more expensive and poor families need not sit in cold housing in the winter; a reduction of sales tax for energy to zero percent whereby the people who keep the country running can drive to work in a car; an increase in the basic allowance for taxes so that more of the fleeing Mittelstand may continue to remain. All of these are measures which can be implemented in the short-term and display immediate effect.

Let me here also speak just briefly on the role of the European Central Bank; since we speak of the inflation which the ECB is not allowed to overlook. The years-long zero interest rate policy and the money printing orgies have created the prerequisites for the expropriation of the German saver, those who have of course given up the D-mark. And instead of the ECB now defending these people, to which they have entrusted their entire savings, “Madame Inflation” Lagarde punctually fulfills the wishes of the bankrupt states in the south. To this there must be a halt. Let us relegate the ECB to the place pertaining to it in the treaties! Let us in common place ourselves in defense of the German saver, and let us implement measures which really fight the inflation!

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, December 9, 2021, Russia and the Ukraine

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/6, pp. 270-271.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

First I want to reprove that, as matters stand, the Foreign Minister is not at the first foreign policy debate.

            Filiz Polat (Greens): One moment!

We have heard no apology.

            Filiz Polat (Greens): She is in Paris!

Where is the Foreign Minister?

            Filiz Polat (Greens): In Paris. That you know quite precisely!

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): Simply for once remove the blinkers!  

Then there needs be an official apology.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): To you or to whom?

Ladies and gentlemen, let us come to the theme. Yes, it is unpleasant [ungemütlich], what there takes place on the border between the Ukraine and Russia; less because an incursion of the Russians needs be feared than much more because such situations can get out of control. It is therefore good and right when the Federal government with our allies uses their diplomatic opportunities so to relax conditions. It is less good and right to find fault in this development always only on one side.

Foreign policy, ladies and gentlemen, and diplomacy should proceed from the realities. And reality is again now that Russia perceives the order on its borders as unsatisfactory. I do not want to here resuscitate the old quarrel as to whether there was in the scope of the re-unification negotiations an oral pledge not to expand NATO beyond the former DDR – as Herr Teltschik said –  so much to the CDU colleagues. That is history.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): All of it disproved!

Yet the present is that Russia has always drawn a red line there where it has to do with the old Russian settlement area. The Ukraine and White Russia are plainly not to be compared with Poland and Hungary and also plainly not with the Baltic States annexed in the context of the Hitler-Stalin pact. To that extent, we are plainly not dealing with an ordering of the peace accepted by all sides – despite the treaties of 1994.

            Volker Ulrich (CDU/CSU): That is historical amnesia!

            Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU): Do you know the Treaty of Paris?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I know the West’s counter-argument, there are no more spheres of influence and these countries are free to choose their alliances. This argument may be correct international law.

            Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): Ja!

Politically, it is unsustainable.

            Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU): Kremlin propaganda!

For the Americans also in 1961 in the Cuba crisis with complete right had insisted that mid-range rockets in their backyard were not acceptable for the peace of the world. And Cuba’s sovereignty then needed to stand down behind a great power’s sphere of influence, dear friends; and that should primarily the colleagues of the CDU write behind the ears.

            Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU): So far, it’s still to come.

Besides: That on the other side is exactly as for Finland, the neutrality of which was and is not entirely voluntary.

There are now again historical-political circumstances which, without legal obligation, restrict a state’s freedom of action. Therefore, it is not prudent [klug] to insist on something which will be regarded by Russia as an unacceptable provocation: The ever stronger involvement of the Ukraine, yet also of Georgia, with Western security structures. And even if it is difficult for the rules-based multi-lateralists: The security and independence of the Ukraine is better served with a neutrality accepted by Russia than with weapons deliveries or a membership in NATO, ladies and gentlemen.

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): I think they should decide that themselves.

So long as Russia lugs around the phantom woes of a shattered empire should the West keep this in mind in regards its reactions and disclaim any further expansion of its order against the Russian border. Since not, ladies and gentlemen, foremost international law but before all political prudence secures the peaceful living together of peoples and states. Ladies and gentlemen, certainly we Germans might have a duty to also make this clear to the Ukraine.

I am grateful.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Ojeojeoje!

 

[trans: tem]

 

Peter Boehringer, December 9, 2021, Economic Stabilization

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/6, p. 231.

Overdue is today’s proposed reduction in the thus far grotesquely high volume of guarantees of over 500 billion euros; we have plainly heard it here. It was, as per reckoning, set from 500 to 900 or 1,000 percent too high by Olaf Scholz. We are speaking of this here. This is now here corrected.

Yet profiting from the Economic Stabilization Fund [WSF], as we have just heard, are contrarily almost only those big businesses sought out according to political criteria.

            Andreas Schwartz (SPD): That was indeed the purpose!

Each workplace, such as those of the TUI [Tourist Union International], was subsidized with 125,000 euros from the WSF. And if the KfW [Credit Institute for Reconstruction] assistance credits are included which, ja, can in any case be guaranteed by the state through the WSF, then it is even 430,000 euros per TUI employee.

Thousands of small travel offices and tourist organizations, with this same law, would have been able to be saved by the state. They, however, were simply victims of Corona, for whom Olaf Scholz neither as Finance Minister nor as Chancellor concerns himself in any form.

Quite the opposite: In Germany today, millions of guiltless people are discriminated against by 2G rules lacking medical logic; since the vaccinated also are potentially infectious and they too occupy thousands of intensive-care beds.

            Leni Breymaier (SPD): So simple is the world?

A society is sick when people continually without symptoms need prove to be healthy, or indeed will be generally excluded for denying their own bodies to an increasingly ineffective and insecure method of vaccination. The AfD here today once again declares itself to be in solidarity with millions of people who daily unfairly suffer from this injustice and discrimination.

            Karsten Klein (FDP): Unsolidarisch!

We experience since March 2020 a politically made escalation: The healthcare emergency, statistically defined to a point and still promoted by means of premiums for the dismantlement of beds, becomes by means of a de facto compulsory vaccination a legal emergency, then by means of lockdowns an economic emergency, and then finally a budget emergency. We need to get out of this continuous loop. End the completely failed preventive measures against Corona and with that alone the budget and the economy will pull themselves together.

On the WSF construction: Exactly as during the financial crisis of ten years ago, we also hear again the dictum: “They are nevertheless mere guarantees…” [„Es sind doch bloss Garantien…”]; exactly like that time. That was besides at that time, exactly ten years ago, the title of an article which I had published on the first rescue of Greece. The guarantees of today are the credits of tomorrow, the write-offs of the day after, and in the end higher taxes.

And today again is the guarantee construct only a trick for the postponement in time of the meantime public agitation. By means of guarantees, the WSF’s hidden credits are partially lost. Yet you still do not say that to the people today. The KfW and the WSF will draw on these guarantees. The write-offs will then burden future taxpayers, but only after der Ampel [traffic light coalition]. And it happens – my last sentence, Frau President –  that with this disguise FDP Finance Minister Lindner exactly there continues where the Merkel Groko left off.   

 

Many thanks.

 

 

[trans: tem]