In business news from Germany last night, they got around to a small story which they'd prefer not to discuss much. It's apparent now that the VW diesel episode has this curious twist to it.
For weeks, everyone was told how this US science foundation group went out and did the research and finally got the EPA to react on the evil VW corporation and the faulty diesel tests. It was a nice story, and helped to hype up the negativity that Germans typically have about the "evil-Americans".
Roughly twenty-percent of the German population (a lot of intellectual types) hype the evil-American routine and agenda. This runs from the Iraq War business, to Wall Street, onto the evil George Bush, and includes the evil Republicans. So having the evil-Americans to focus onto for the diesel episode helped to focus the story onto the right people.
Well.....there's a problem.
As told yesterday.....one member of the EU who will remain anonymous for the time being.....apparently figured out the invalid diesel tests.....tried to get the EU through Germany to do something, and they did nothing. So this EU member (who will remain anonymous) told the EPA and they apparently found some foundation to prove these tests, thus getting the EPA to the final stage of saying "there's a problem".
Who spoke to the EPA? Unknown.
Who disliked Germany enough to take this maneuver? There are probably three or four countries that one might suspect. There's the British....who always have a grudge. There's the Luxembourg crowd who are angry over tax-harbor accusations. There's the French, who might see this as a chance to slap at Germany.
Curiously, the news media folks haven't really gotten to this point yet of asking "who". You'd think.....it would be priority number one. Yet, they seem to just overlook this.....almost in an intentional way.
The evil-American slant to the story? Well.....the EPA will still get their money and Germans can still be furious at how the evil-Americans achieved this fine deal. It's just that there's some other party in this mix.....who really hurt the German economy in a major way, and they were a friend (always the intellectual German speaking about their EU partners). Friends don't rat on friends.....at least if you were a real friend.
I don't know where this will go or if anyone will ever dig into the story to find the rat who tattled upon the VW folks. It's just odd how everyone wanted the evil-American slant to continue on.
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