

It’s the Economy, Dummkopf!  - kjw
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/09/europe-201109?currentPage=all

======
darklajid
This article tries hard to present something useful/interesting in a
lightweight manner. And is insulting throughout the text.

What stuck out was "Shit, crap, anal, Hitler, Hitler, anal, excrement, Greek
people are lazy and dumb, good that they don't have Jews anymore, Hitler,
Nazi, Holocaust, "Deutschland unter alles" a reference to the (now illegal)
part of the 'Deutschlandlied' originally called 'Deutschland ueber alles'
(think Nazi hymn).

I stop reading now. This is the most disgusting thing I've read for a long
time, and goatse would probably feel like a relief now.

Stavros, what's your take on the Greek stereotypes..?

And to add insult to - erm - insult:

Page 9: “Why should you pay $20 million to a 32-year-old trader? He uses the
office space, the I.T., the business card with a first-class name on it. If I
take the business card away from that guy he would probably sell hot dogs.” He
is the German equivalent of the head of Bank of America, or Citigroup, and he
is actively hostile to the idea that bankers should make huge sums of money.

\---

He in this case is Klaus-Peter Müller. Please check the first hit I found
searching for his name and 'Einkommen'/income. It's German and outdated, but
Google Translate should help or just scroll down to see amounts listed next to
his name. You see what he got 2007 and (oh, poor guy took a hit) what he got
in 2008 up until the 15.05. Yes it's not 20 million. But 'hostile to the idea
that bankers should make huge sums of money'? > 2 million / year? What exactly
is the author smoking?

[http://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/aktien/vorstandsgehaelte...](http://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/aktien/vorstandsgehaelter/vorstandsgehaelter-
martin-blessing_aid_10905.html)

~~~
StavrosK
If you're referring to me, that came as quite the surprise. If not, I'll reply
anyway:

I didn't manage to read the entire article (it's 17 pages), but I'll comment
on the parts I did manage to read. First of all, I've never heard of anyone in
Greece making 70k, as the article says. 40k is considered a really high
salary, although I think that might be 55k before taxes (I'm not sure about
the calculation). At any rate, the median is much, much lower, as most of my
friends get around 1k a month, which is about enough for one person to live
on. We're hardly a rich country.

About the 13th and 14th salaries, those are Easter/Christmas bonuses, and are
(used to be) given to everyone, including people who make 800-1000
Euros/month. I've never heard of them being an accounting trick, but I can't
be sure.

Generally, the stereotype Greeks have for themselves is one of the
enterprising, law-defying Greek who will try to get by doing the minimum
amount of work possible. It's true in many areas, e.g. the public sector,
where services are dysfunctional and only open to the public for 4-5 hours a
day. A Greek joke has three children (French, English and Greek) comparing
their mass transit times, saying "my father gets off work at 4 and he's home
at 4:30", "my father is home at 4:15", and the Greek kid says "mine's a civil
servant, he gets off work at 4 and he's home at 2".

To make matters worse, civil servants can't be fired, this was a measure
instituted years ago to avoid politicians hiring and firing their people every
four years to get votes, I don't think this has changed since then.

The problem with Greece is that societal values are pretty much "every man for
himself", which is why we're having so much trouble with everything public.
There's no regard for public spaces, no regard for a well-run society, even
politicians are only trying to embezzle as much as they can while doing the
minimum amount of work to get reelected.

It's odd, this systemic laziness is both contrasting and complementing the
fact that most of my friends today are either out of work and desperately
looking for anything, or working 10-12 hour days for 700-800 euros a month, no
paid overtime, and no security. You wouldn't call people who work this hard
"lazy", of course, but the moment someone could get a job in the public
sector, they'd work much less, simply because that is the norm there. There's
no incentive for anyone to work hard, and there's no penalty for not working
hard in the public sector.

Given these (dis)incentives and the mindset in the workplace, I think that
anyone would do the same. It's clear that we need public services to be more
meritocratic, but that doesn't align with the politicians' incentives.

Sorry about the stream-of-consciousness post, but most of the things came to
me as I wrote them. I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has.

~~~
ugh
Yeah, the „dreizehntes Monatsgehalt“ (thirteenth monthly salary) is common in
Germany, too. Many more than half of all employees in Germany get it. It’s a
Christmas bonus, usually about equal to one monthly salary. It’s nothing
special.

If I know my Griswold correctly, Christmas bonuses don’t seem to be too
uncommon in the US as well.

------
zeteo
>The only financial disaster in the last decade German bankers appear to have
missed was investing with Bernie Madoff. (Perhaps the only advantage to the
German financial system of having no Jews.)

Ouch.

~~~
joshklein
Germany has a population of ~200,000 Jewish people, which is over 1% of the
global Jewish population and puts Germany among the 10 nations with the
largest Jewish populations.[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany#Jews_in_the_reunited_Germany_.28post-1990.29)

------
joezydeco
Kind of odd to mention the German obsession with shit and not mention _the
shelf toilet_. That's like stop #1 on the tour.

<http://asecular.com/~scott/misc/toilet.htm>

~~~
darklajid
I downvoted you, because..

Really? Fecal humo(u)r on HN? Ignoring the stereotypes and you repeating the
'German obession with shit' line as a sort of fact, that's just low.

~~~
joezydeco
Actually I was just pointing out the fact that the author, whom I respect and
have read, tried to tie this story to the stereotype without actually
involving himself in true German culture or, as I have, actually spent a
serious amount of time in the country with actual citizens. Hell, I married
one.

------
bh42222
An interesting look at a theorized national German character. But I agree with
the driver/interpreter woman, Germany is huge, Bavarian, and North German, and
High German are not even mutually intelligible. The article just didn't
convince me of anything.

It didn't explain exactly why German banks were so blind to risk. And the
claim that German banking is behind the times, is also just plain wrong. I
can't find the Economist article, but there is one bemoaning how backward and
inefficient American banks are compared to German banks. But the Economist
might have referred more to retail banking, this seems to be more about
investment banking.

In any case, long article, interesting read, but does not answer much unless
you buy into the author's weakly supported thesis that Germans are anal-
retentive to the point of being cripplingly oblivious to any kind of deceit.

~~~
ugh
It’s not interesting, it’s completely speculative and might as well be
numerology.

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yaix
LOL. Did "The Sun" hack into the vanityfair web site and placed this article
or what happened?

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mtrn
Single page version: <http://www.readability.com/articles/yt57clbl>

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S_A_P
I dunno if it's the mobile redirect or not but I can't view the page on my
phone. Either way why oh why do people redirect without my input to
m.site.com??? Maybe try to make your content readable no matter what the
format. Secondly, make sure redirects don't break your page. Just sayin

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tallpapab
Stopped reading because site would not let me resize in my eye pad. Too old to
squint.

