1. How big a deal is this Ruble 'shutdown'? Well...ten percent of value....dropped like a rock. So the ordinary Russian will be hit.
Enough to get Putin to a table? That's really the question.
For reference....a dollar buy around 108 Rubles now (peaked 2 days ago at 110). Two decades ago....it was near a dollar buying 40 Rubles. As the war started....peaked at around 140 Rubles per dollar.
2. Focus had a crime piece where they discussed numbers....saying of every 10 crimes in Germany....a clan organization is behind it.
3. Achat, a German hotel chain (50 hotels, 5,000 rooms) went to bankruptcy paperwork yesterday. Lot of their problems lingered from Covid-era....where they took a serious 'hit'.
4. New EU mandate coming into play in 2025. It used to be acceptable that if you had old textiles or clothing....you could put that in residual waste (regular garbage). New EU rule? You must dump it into a used clothing containers. The EU even worded it...to apply to bed linen, towels and curtains.
5. The RWE folks (the electrical company) spoke up yesterday and said that for November...they BARELY produced enough electricity for the grid, and at the current pace....they expect parts of the grid to black-out for some specified time in December.
They also noted....they might avoid this by buying non-German power (say from France). Cheap buy? NO....consumers won't be happy if this comes to pass.
Then they gave some tips, which I found interesting. They noted there is a difference between brown-outs and black-outs....being one is controlled/expected, and the other is sudden.
As for the peak time for a brown-out? Dinner at night (you might be in the middle of cooking, and it fails). Brown-outs, by their theory....will last 'minutes'. Black-outs? Those might go for an hour or two.
As for building more stations into the grid? Well....it requires some effort by the Bundestag. Political issue for the campaign? Well...it's funny timing. Up until this point....grid reliability was NOT a top 20 issue for the campaign.
6. More talk in the past day or two....of banning the AfD Party. What'll happen if the ban occurs? No one speaks to that scenario (the court system could step in and halt the ban).
The AfD voters could end up going to BSW and super-inflate their position. I would do the math here....but it would appear under this scenario....a BSW-AfD voter situation would near 24-percent (still in 2nd place) but greatly affecting the coalition game.
7. Serious topic....Polio was considered to be eradicated. Well...waste-water tests in 4 German cities has detected the Polio virus. The four? Munich, Bonn, Cologne and Hamburg.
Basically, some folks are unknowingly walking around, in some stage of polio and will end up being crippled-up unless they are tested.
I'll just say....for Germans....it is going to be a high-discussion topic and freak some folks out.
8. German truth-commission digging into the Afghan withdrawal of 2021. Lot of blame goes toward intelligence-services, and lack of planning (mostly aiming at the US).
9. Finally to note....that smoke-ban rule change in the EU (I've discussed it twice already this week)....was openly debated in the EU yesterday. Vote came....FAILED. So the smoke bans will NOT take place.
Interesting how this suddenly came up.....got into public view, and quickly fell apart.
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