Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Billion Dollar 'Bribe'?

 It's a bit amusing, but factual.  Germany (via a Focus business report today) says that it'll offer the US....one billion dollars to just shut up about the Nord Stream pipeline deal....to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany.

The effort to cancel or suspend the project because of the poisoning of the Russian?  Well....that whole tirade by the Germans to 'fall upon their sword', has fallen apart.  No one in the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition seems willing to fully cancel or halt the pipeline project.  

So the gimmick to be employed....pull out roughly 850 billion Euro (a billion dollars) to get Trump to just shut up.

How much was at risk, if the poisoning had led to cancelling the project?  Around four to five billion Euro.  So money-wise, it makes sense to pick the one-billion dollars and just offer it.

If German tax-payers had any incentive to halt the bribe?  I suspect 80-percent of the German public would ask....what the hell are you doing offering a bribe?

So the question comes to this....would Trump just say 'fine' and the US accepts the one-billion-dollar bribe?  No one can really say anything about this....one way or the other.  Trump might say fine and accept.  Trump might go and say it has to be two-billion dollars, and just grin at the Germans.  They might say sure....paying out the two-billion.  

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