Q-and-A

 1.  With this appearance before a 'truth-commission' (on the Cum-ex scandal in Hamburg) yesterday by Chancellor Scholz....how did things go?

Well....you got two things out of him.  First, he admitted there were meetings with bankers but he really doesn't remember much of these meetings.....bunch of chatter over money apparently but it doesn't seem like he was interested in any of this money BS.

Second, he said it bluntly, as mayor....he had no influence over the Warburg Bank.  

You get the impression that he just walks around in a daze for hours at a time.  I've worked with managers like this.....who attended two-hour meetings and couldn't remember anything from the meeting.

2.  There was a lot of hype this week over ARD public TV news about the glaciers of Germany melting.  What's the deal?

Well....if you watch ARD news, they strongly hint that those dust storms from Africa laid down a bunch of dust....which interacted with the sun, and triggered more melting than normal.

Then they added....it was a moderate winter this past year.

Then they added....the hot summer heat.

I'd add a personal note here.  This year...I threw a fan into the corner of the living room this summer...pointed to the ceiling and shifting air around in the room.  So I'd set my normal glass of iced-up water (with ten cubes) on a table by the chair.  Strangely enough, within 20 minutes, with air flow....the ice was gone.  Air flow, just in general, melts ice at a faster pace.  If you had zero or moderate air flow....it'd be a different story.  

(Note, I'm not a rocket scientist...nor will I be writing papers over this phenonium....but there's some 64 letter German word for this scientific principal.)

3.  This collapse of the Montenegro government here in Europe this week....a big deal?

First, if you asked Germans where the hell Montenegro sits?  About five-percent would point it out on a map.  

Second, what this collapse was really about?  The PM of the newly formed government went and did some crazy action of signing an agreement with the Serbian Orthodox Church.  The deal?  It gave special rights/recognition to the religious group.  One of the coalition partners of the new PM's government was very anti-Serbian Orthodox Church, and weren't really informed of how this deal was going.

On a scale of one to ten.....in Europe, this was a '1' for the most part.  In Montenegro?  Most would probably give it a '5' and thought it was not such a big deal.  Now they have to face up to a new election, and more political bickering.

4.  Will hydrogen end up fixing the whole energy crisis in Germany and Europe?  

Well....yeah, without any doubt.

How far away is commercial energy production with hydrogen? More than twenty years away, and that's the tragic part of this discussion.

5.  What's this firing scandal developing with RBB (Berlin public TV network)?

It's a curious thing....back around 2018, the 'boss' at RBB (this newly fired individual) got into some confrontation with a media manager of the organization.  The person was nowhere near retirement age, so Schlesinger (the network boss at the time) cooked up a firing where they basically agreed to pay the employee a yearly check (not a one-time-walk-out-the-door situation like you'd normally see).  

At this point (summer of 2022), the person has made 300,000 Euro.  By the end?  It will amount to 700,000 Euro....all coming from the public TV tax.

Yeah, on the crapped-up scale....this is a '10'.

Added to this comedy, someone figured out that after the firing occurred....RBB actually paid out 20,000 Euro as a 'bonus' to the individual let go.

All of this resulting in huge public frustration?  Oh....guaranteed.  There will be probably three or four truth-commissions coming out of this mess, and it'll result in dozens of public TV managers being 'let-go'.