Olaf Scholz’s approval rating has plummeted to a record low after his grilling at an anti-corruption probe added to widespread dissatisfaction with his response to the Ukraine war and Germany’s energy crisis.
The chancellor was roundly criticised for his apparent lapses of memory in front of investigators in Hamburg on Friday, where he faced questions over his role in a tax fraud scandal.
Commentators noted he answered 29 questions about the scandal, part of which unfolded under his watch as Hamburg mayor, by saying he could not remember.
Well, there’s that of course.
Mr Scholz then appeared before a Hamburg parliamentary committee investigating the CumEx scandal.
The scheme involved banks and investors exploiting a loophole on dividend payments that enabled them to claim multiple tax rebates and is believed to have cost European governments as much as €55 billion.
Investigators sought details of meetings he had with the founder of a Hamburg bank involved in CumEx trades.
But the Cum/Ex thing really is lovely. I can’t be bothered to look up or recall some of the details. So here’s the simple version.
Some version of dividend taxation. Perhaps certain taxpayers should be charged the tax so they could claim it back when it was charged at the level of the company, before distribution. It starts with something like that. A dividend tax that not everyone has to pay, so some get to recoup it. Because it is collected first, then recouped by the right people.
However, a flaw in the system. Who could reclaim it wasn’t properly controlled. Specifically, who actually owned the shares on the correct date wasn’t recorded properly. So, it was possible for more than one person to claim that ownership. Along the lines of settlement is T+3 (say) and if you sell on T-1 then on T+1 and T+2 then it’s possible for the seller and the buyer to both reclaim the tax payment. Again, might be details screwed up here but the general idea is correct. Not nailing down who actually owned on the correct date meant more than one could claim the rebate.
So, cart and horses gets driven through this. Which is, when you think about it, quite lovely, isn’t it? Because it’s the inaccuracy of government itself which allows it…….
Looks like they really mucked it up.
Well I can’t be bothered to look it up either. But the taxman missing 55 billion seems unlikely if he’s doing his job. The trades are registered, and if by some quirk some insiders get to claim rebates that aren’t properly due, then the taxman can go after them ex post facto, as we say in Greece.
Seems to me like a scam for the politically connected.
With the likelihood that a part of the scammed rebate money went back to the politicians.
Scholz’s life is not going to bemade easier by his energy minister saying that Germany was not going to extend the life of its last nuclear plants because it “won’t save enough gas.”
BiFR and TMB, have you lots of candles at home ?
The ‘I cannot remember’ line seems to work with Krankie
Otto,
As one commenter I saw put it, if Germany isn’t going to help itself why the fuck should other countries help when the lights go out?
I also understand that Germany is sitting on about 14 years of easily accessible gas through fracking with harder to get reserves taking it to 30 years.
@Otto
You old sweetie! Thanks for your concern but here in Gildefurt I’m actually stockpiling logs.
At first I thought this was something to do with Rocco…
“…the taxman missing 55 billion seems unlikely…”
If it were a single hole in a single pocket, for sure. But it’s lots of different countries’ taxmen, over a period of many years. Entirely plausible.
You won’t notice lockdowns and vax side effects killing millions either, because the deaths will be spread out over the next 20 years.
“Scholz’s life is not going to bemade easier by his energy minister saying that Germany was not going to extend the life of its last nuclear plants because it “won’t save enough gas.””
Au contraire, the establishment media (i.e., all the media) are cheering it all on, and the greens would win an election were one held tomorrow. Scholz’s electoral problem is of his own making. German voters want to be punished harder and harder.
“BiFR and TMB, have you lots of candles at home ?”
No candles, but enough stuff to survive other likely shortages until a rampaging mob comes and takes it off me. That small garden in Argentina of threads passim is looking more and more inviting.
Well we are running at something like 1000 excess deaths per week at the moment. If that carries on it’ll be noticed. You can already see some lockdown zealots going quiet.
Jimmers – You can already see some lockdown zealots going quiet.
I’m not convinced lockdown crazies are real, fully developed people with an internal dialogue and all the other stuff that goes with the capacity for critical thinking.
Seems more likely, based on the past couple of years, that they’re biochemical reflex machines who spit out whatever their media-delivered Pavlovian training requires them to “believe”.
The reason they’ve mostly shut up about the Plague isn’t because they’ve re-evaluated the situation they never evaluated in the first place. They simply moved on to parroting received opinions on racism, Ukraine, climate emergency, nationalising the energy industry, or whatever we’re meant to be angry and afraid of this week.
I still see a few maskies in supermarkets, resembling elderly Japanese soldiers still fighting WW2 in the jungles of East Asia well into the 1970’s. Imagine living your so-called life like that.
Eyes without a face,
Got no human grace.
They’re eyes without a face.
Hence the meme about NPCs (Non-player characters in video games), since they seem to operate not from internal thought processes, but only from broadcast propaganda of the moment.
“I support the current thing” said the NPC.
There seem to be huge swathes of the buggers, especially in Parliament and the various mainstream news rooms.
I have recently become aware of a video from 2010 wherein Nick Clegg opposes new nuclear plant of the grounds they wouldn’t be operational until 2022…
“You old sweetie!”
Ah shucks !
Gildefurt. Lol. At least you’re not in MittelSachsen, which is a bit roughthese days. 🙂
At least they seem to be bringing the UK gas storage facility back online, which was closed some years ago as there was “no operational use for it”.
Whether it will be open and running in time to store enough gas for this winter is another question.
Bloody idiots.
JG – the lack of effort in dealing with this real crisis, compared with the fake one based around a cough that’s dangerous to terminally ill octogenarians, is pretty telling.
Yes, Rough will be back online in “weeks”, after months of fannying about. We’re no closer to being able to secure any more gas in meaningful quantities tho, either from the UK sector of the North Sea – which successive governments were happy to watch slowly decline, shifting its focus to subsidy-sucking bollocks such as carbon capture instead of drilling new fields – or from onshore fracking – which is still, effectively, illegal – or from Norway – which has problems of its own and likely to cut gas exports this winter.
The Germans were boasting about getting slightly ahead of schedule last week in their storage efforts. Inevitably, within 48 hours, Gazprom discovered a new reason to shut down NordStream 1. You don’t need Lt. Columbo to see where this is heading.
There’s a slowly dawning horror unfolding in the press as people gradually catch on to what various Blokes on here were warning about months ago. But they haven’t quite gotten there yet, still a lot of pointless bumpickery about useless displacement activities (windfall taxes or minor tax cuts or the government taking over the likes of Bulb). None of these will address the problem.
The problem is that we’re facing a desperate shortage of supply at prices we can afford, and this is going to choke our economy to death and then Savile the corpse. It’s not a temporary problem, it won’t magically go away if we survive the winter. It’s shaping up to be a continental scale Great Depression that’ll last for years.
If HM Gov was serious about this, it would be doing serious things to secure more fuel – any fuel – as its number one priority. Greeniebollocks would already be gone. And instead of thinking up new ways to piss off Russia, we’d have a sensible conversation about what it is we’re trying to achieve in Ukraine and how we expect our policies to achieve our desired outcomes, because so far they’ve turned out to be as efficacious as a boomerang made of human shit.
But we’re seeing none of that. It’s More Fannying About, More Greta, and More Poundshop Churchill impressions all round. But then, MP’s aren’t going to be shivering in the dark along with the rest of the newly unemployed this Christmas, are they?
In case you were wondering, that was a party political broadcast from the Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho. party. Welcome to the party, pals!
Hmmm. Yup, pretty much.
For myself, I’ve gotten the alternates up and running. Bottled gas for about few months worth of cooking / heating along with a reasonable amount of wood as a backup.
I’m not expecting to need it, but it’s there if things start getting bad.
“Just in case” I keep telling myself.
Well we are running at something like 1000 excess deaths per week at the moment. If that carries on it’ll be noticed. You can already see some lockdown zealots going quiet.
Your regular reminder that in less than 5 years you won’t be able to find anyone who will admit that they demanded lockdowns. (I originally said 5 years, its more likely to be 3.)
I have recently become aware of a video from 2010 wherein Nick Clegg opposes new nuclear plant of the grounds they wouldn’t be operational until 2022…
And we sill get told there’s no point starting to frack because it won’t be ready in time.
If HM Gov was serious about this, it would be doing serious things to secure more fuel – any fuel – as its number one priority. Greeniebollocks would already be gone.
Which shows that they are more scared of the green blob, if they aren’t part of it, than the looming riots if things get anywhere near as bad as we are being told.
Thankfully we have mainly hydro electric locally so not likely to see a big impact but I did get my chimney cleaned and stockpile some extra firewood over the weekend as heating is gas powered. Will also be stocking up on gas cylinders for my camping stove just in case
BniC: I live near enought to a bloody great nuclear power station, but that’s unlikely to help me as much of the energy it produces will wing its way to London instead. Thankfully they can’t take it all as the 400kV line down there hasn’t got the capacity. There is a plan to build a bigger line so they can steal it all but that is still bogged in planning appeals I think.
The local Indian hardware store is still selling a 4-pack of Campingaz CP 220g for £8 (so £2 a can). Then again it’s still summer and camping is ongoing here in Scotland.
I’d imagine by winter those will be selling at a significant markup if it looks like the shits gonna hit the fan. Fine for cooking and a bit of heat as long as you’ve got a decent sized kitchen and a carbon monoxide monitor.
Still a shit state of affairs though, but who said the end of Western Civilisation was gonna be cozy?