Normally...anything of substance that a banker says...usually goes in one ear and out the other. Occasionally, they might mention a 60-second bit over home loans or the future of Wall Street that would captivate you. Once in a great while...one banker might stand up and make a dynamic 12-minute speech over the financial direction of the nation.
For the past year, there's this German Bundesbank board member....Thilo Sarrazin...who decided to chat on some things that bankers would never chat on....immigration and Turks.
Almost every time that Thilo opened his mouth....he basically hinted that Turks weren't helping German society or culture. Then he'd hint that Turks weren't willing to truly integrate. And on at least one occasion, Thilo hinted that it wasn't in their generic makeup to be extremely intelligent.
For some odd reason....folks started to listen to Thilo. Naturally the majority of folks...especially Turks and any immigrant in Germany....had issues. German politicians started to have issues. Newspapers did their best to dump on Thilo and his comments.
Thilo, for the sake of argument...is a SPD guy (liberal left or center left). This has confused a number of folks because you'd assumed that most all liberals are accepting of immigration and want a simple simple agenda in approval of more immigrants.
If this was soley up to the Chancellor....she would have removed Thilo already. Part of this game for his board position is that you'd like for his period to come to a close (it has a limit), and just let him disappear into the sunset of non-importance. Another part is that he is actually an attractive magnet for some folks and their ideas.
For the Bundesbank crowd....they'd like for his removal because they are mostly a bunch of banker dudes with no logical reason to attract news interest on a daily basis. They are used to boring finance news....and Thilo is really dishing out lots of non-finance news.
So the Bundesbank has this legal opinion that if the Chancellor and the Bundestag gives a wink or nod....they are prepared to remove Thilo. Some folks (Der Spiegel is one of them) believe there is a 20-page report on Thilo that's prepared and can be used for his dismissal on a moment's notice.
But, there is a problem.
Some folks have been doing polls. Roughly twenty percent of German society are prepared to form up a political protest party, naturally headed by Thilo. It's not just CDU folks....who have a fair number of Bavarians who actually agree with Thilo....it's also the SPD folks of the left as well. In fact, the folks over at the Linke Party are rumored to have around one-third of their members who ready to jump and join up as well.
So, there is a nervous bunch of German political folks (right, left, and far-left). One guy has captivated the German imagination...outside of their political "ring-of-fire" for the first time in years.
Firing would be the worst possible option because Thilo just might stand up and gather the voters...and whack off twenty percent of the current establishment belonging to three or four parties. The Greens are apparently the only party insulated from this mess. He won't win the election...but he'd make life awful miserable for folks.
Imagine a situation where the CDU barely has 25 percent of the vote in an election...the SPD at 25 percent....the Greens at 10 percent....the Linke at 8 percent....the FDP at 7 percent....and here is Thilo's gang at roughly 24 percent. How would you partner up on this deal? It'd take a minimum of two parties to reach 50 percent, which is mandatory to run the government.
You'd have to start counting on alot of friendly nature between the SPD & CDU....or three parties in this arrangement.
So everyone would like for Thilo to mostly continue on....whispering terrible insults....until the news bubble is finished and then he just walks away into the sunset.
My humble guess? I predict that he's nowhere near finished on comments...and by December...it's going to be even more pointed on his views of immigrants in Germany. That's the main problem with the waiting game....he just might convince another ten percent of the country that he's right...and then the political power argument goes into turbo. I think by December, he'll be gone...and he'll do what damage he can to the major political parties in Germany who don't want to openly discuss the problems at hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment