The German government is opening talking about Coronavirus stimulus money now.
The amount? Eighty billion. To be honest, it's not a heck of a lot.
A fair amount going to existing debt of towns and cities? Yes. This comes from an issue that popped up about five years ago, where a bunch of German financial experts for towns....had the town's credit tied to a number of Swiss banks (best rate of interest)....then one day, the Swiss flipped their exchange rate, and suddenly the amount of debt went up drastically. Since that point.....the towns and cities have never fully recovered, and are still in deep debt to the Swiss banks.
The story goes that 28 billion of this 80 billion is going toward the railway system, roads, and bridges.
Mobility vouchers? Well, imagine this....you been wanting an electric bike (in the 2,500 Euro range) and you'd use it (at least you hint that) for going to work. So they want to issue some vouchers. No one says the amount involved, but I kinda doubt that it goes past 400 Euro per consumer.
Can you buy a decent E-bike for 1,000 Euro? Hell no. You don't even start getting to a decent cheapo version until you get to the 1,500 Euro level. And for the better E-bikes, you'd be talking about a minimum of 2,000 Euro.
Will these people even ride the bike daily to work? That's another issue by itself. Some folks might be real enthusiastic from May to September.....but lose that desire come the winter period.
The summer break starts up in roughly four weeks, so this 'package' has to be worked out and agreed upon by the CDU/CSU folks and the SPD Party.
Will 80-billion be enough? Probably not, but they don't want to get deeper into debt at this point. Lets be honest, at least the 28-billion for bridges, roads and railways might be smartly spent and show something for the money. But some of these railway projects are one-billion-plus Euro by themselves.....so this money probably isn't going too far.
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