Admittedly it’s only a quibble, but Adam Garfinkle is off base when he attributes a decline in American economic performance to the “massive under-investments in science, infrastructure and education.”
He may have a point about infrastructure but under-investment in this area can be explained, at least in part, by the classic competition between guns and butter. Americans pay for all the guns, freeing up the Germans to enjoy the butter. The price of one F-35 provides a handsome down payment for a brand-spanking new airport terminal in Frankfort. A squadron of F-35s would pay to weatherize the energy infrastructure of a place like Texas. Instead we’re spending money modernizing Ramstein
In his zeal to deny that the Germans are free-riders, Adam Garfinkle goes a bit too far.
Then there’s his assertion that the United States is deficient in its investment in science. Deficient compared to whom? The United States invests far more in basic and applied scientific research than Germany. It also invests far more than Europe as a whole.
Compare, for example, the amount of funding provided by American taxpayers to NIH with funds provided to the Medical Research Council of Germany. To cut to the punchline-there is no comparison. The same is true outside of the field of biomedical research. The NSF, NASA and DARPA are far more generously supported than any
similar German organizations.
None of this even accounts for the huge investment in scientific research provided by Americans through an impressive list of NGOs and especially, private foundations. Support for science from these types of agencies is negligible in Germany-and that’s on a good way.
When the topic of American subsidization of the German lifestyle comes up, the discussion usually focuses on defense spending. Actually it goes way beyond that. Every German who needs a chemotherapy drug, a medicine for an autoimmune disease or a hip, knee or shoulder replacement can thank Americans for the fact that those therapies are available.
Whether these therapies are developed by American manufacturers as many are or European or Asian manufacturers, they exist only because it’s the high prices paid by American patients that make the enormous research expenditures needed to develop those therapies possible.
If Americans paid for these therapies what Germans do, we would still be reliant on leeches and cupping as the go to therapies.
As the old saying goes, with friends like these...
"If you ask these questions of an intelligent German, they are apt to be taken as an arrogant, ignorant, and probably deliberate affront. Why? Because the tenor of the US-German bilateral relationship in recent years has made it so. Ex-President Trump was and remains a zero-sum-fixated person who has never been able to wrap his “big brain” around mutually beneficial relationships at any level...."
And therewith Garfinkle exposes himself for the same arrogant, ignorant, and probably deliberately affronting commenter of which he accuses the questioner of being.
Confirmed by this overtly deliberate smear:
"I don’t assume that our questioner is a fan of Donald Trump or Richard Grenell. If he is a fan, then I have better things to do than try to explain reality to a willful nitwit."
After that, nothing of what Garfinkle has to say can have any seriousness, and I have better things to do than wade through his words, no matter how otherwise prettily he might arrange them.
In response, I want to posit two of what I think are accurate statements that might explain in part the whole US/Germany/Rest of the EU and Eurozone relationship.
1. Prior to the Eurozone crisis having a single EU wide or at least Eurozone financial regulator I think would have significantly have mitigated at least the banking aspect of the crisis
2. In terms of global financial power and prestige the US institutionally in the form of the US Treasury Department and US Federal Reserve along with I think US politicians and officials of both parties, I think it is only fair to say the US benefited from lack a single EU financial regulator that would have been in charge of licensing and authorizing US banks operating in the EU and just more broadly competing with America prestige. US policies such as unilateral US sanctions say against Iran or North Korea in the late 2000s would have been far more tricky having to implement in the face of a single EU regulator more accountable say to more "Anti American" voices in the European Parliament in Brussels. In fact I would so far as to say if you accept my premise many of the Cosmopolitan Globalist writers who are deeply "Pro American and Atlanticist" might even agree that having a single EU bank regulator would have been a bad thing.
Now there is no evidence the US played any part in defeating or opposing a single EU bank supervisor and in particular, the creation of one inside the European Central Bank was very much contemplated in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and contemplated not just covering the Eurozone but the opt-out countries like the UK. However, the Treaty article that called for this type of regulation was somewhat vague and any actual implementation required the unanimous approval of all EU Member States so the whole issue was put off until after the Euro was introduced in 1999.
Furthermore back to the US perspective the Single Europe Act back from 1986 essentially gave US banks in London the power to operate across the entire EU but solely under the supervision of national UK regulators which as things in the UK typically work are very pro American and Atlanticist and were known to practice a "light touch" form of regulation. From a US perspective, I think you call this icing on the cake. What is clear is once the Euro was introduced EU Member States governments as a whole were very unenthusiastic to the idea of a single supervisor but the UK, in particular, was very opposed to this transfer of sovereignty to Brussels. In fact, many in the UK joked that the EU "already" had a single bank regulator that of the UK FSA in charge of the City of London. Was this view on the part of the UK taken in part to please the US? Probably not but it was a view that was widely supported in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-American circles in the early 2000s(Remember this was around the time of the Iraq War)
Now, this probably would have to be a whole article on my part but suffice to say the EU did finally get a single EU bank regulator after the Eurozone crisis(in part due to the UK and David Cameron relenting on their historic opposition in 2014) but also one only covering the Eurozone. Then after that, we of course have Brexit with US Banks based in London losing their Single Europe Act "passporting" rights and having to move operations to the EU27 from London as of January 1st this year and now coming under the full authority of the European Central Bank regulation and supervision department(accountable to the usual anti-American suspects in Brussels). But this probably requires me to write a whole article on these implications a lot of which are not clear at this point.
Anyways hopefully I might get around to writing my own article on the further implications of these recent changes in the EU in the near future.
Something else we haven't discussed is NordStream2 just to remind everyone. I know Toomas Ilves has some very strong views on this subject.
Admittedly it’s only a quibble, but Adam Garfinkle is off base when he attributes a decline in American economic performance to the “massive under-investments in science, infrastructure and education.”
He may have a point about infrastructure but under-investment in this area can be explained, at least in part, by the classic competition between guns and butter. Americans pay for all the guns, freeing up the Germans to enjoy the butter. The price of one F-35 provides a handsome down payment for a brand-spanking new airport terminal in Frankfort. A squadron of F-35s would pay to weatherize the energy infrastructure of a place like Texas. Instead we’re spending money modernizing Ramstein
In his zeal to deny that the Germans are free-riders, Adam Garfinkle goes a bit too far.
Then there’s his assertion that the United States is deficient in its investment in science. Deficient compared to whom? The United States invests far more in basic and applied scientific research than Germany. It also invests far more than Europe as a whole.
Compare, for example, the amount of funding provided by American taxpayers to NIH with funds provided to the Medical Research Council of Germany. To cut to the punchline-there is no comparison. The same is true outside of the field of biomedical research. The NSF, NASA and DARPA are far more generously supported than any
similar German organizations.
None of this even accounts for the huge investment in scientific research provided by Americans through an impressive list of NGOs and especially, private foundations. Support for science from these types of agencies is negligible in Germany-and that’s on a good way.
When the topic of American subsidization of the German lifestyle comes up, the discussion usually focuses on defense spending. Actually it goes way beyond that. Every German who needs a chemotherapy drug, a medicine for an autoimmune disease or a hip, knee or shoulder replacement can thank Americans for the fact that those therapies are available.
Whether these therapies are developed by American manufacturers as many are or European or Asian manufacturers, they exist only because it’s the high prices paid by American patients that make the enormous research expenditures needed to develop those therapies possible.
If Americans paid for these therapies what Germans do, we would still be reliant on leeches and cupping as the go to therapies.
As the old saying goes, with friends like these...
"If you ask these questions of an intelligent German, they are apt to be taken as an arrogant, ignorant, and probably deliberate affront. Why? Because the tenor of the US-German bilateral relationship in recent years has made it so. Ex-President Trump was and remains a zero-sum-fixated person who has never been able to wrap his “big brain” around mutually beneficial relationships at any level...."
And therewith Garfinkle exposes himself for the same arrogant, ignorant, and probably deliberately affronting commenter of which he accuses the questioner of being.
Confirmed by this overtly deliberate smear:
"I don’t assume that our questioner is a fan of Donald Trump or Richard Grenell. If he is a fan, then I have better things to do than try to explain reality to a willful nitwit."
After that, nothing of what Garfinkle has to say can have any seriousness, and I have better things to do than wade through his words, no matter how otherwise prettily he might arrange them.
Eric Hines
In response, I want to posit two of what I think are accurate statements that might explain in part the whole US/Germany/Rest of the EU and Eurozone relationship.
1. Prior to the Eurozone crisis having a single EU wide or at least Eurozone financial regulator I think would have significantly have mitigated at least the banking aspect of the crisis
2. In terms of global financial power and prestige the US institutionally in the form of the US Treasury Department and US Federal Reserve along with I think US politicians and officials of both parties, I think it is only fair to say the US benefited from lack a single EU financial regulator that would have been in charge of licensing and authorizing US banks operating in the EU and just more broadly competing with America prestige. US policies such as unilateral US sanctions say against Iran or North Korea in the late 2000s would have been far more tricky having to implement in the face of a single EU regulator more accountable say to more "Anti American" voices in the European Parliament in Brussels. In fact I would so far as to say if you accept my premise many of the Cosmopolitan Globalist writers who are deeply "Pro American and Atlanticist" might even agree that having a single EU bank regulator would have been a bad thing.
Now there is no evidence the US played any part in defeating or opposing a single EU bank supervisor and in particular, the creation of one inside the European Central Bank was very much contemplated in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and contemplated not just covering the Eurozone but the opt-out countries like the UK. However, the Treaty article that called for this type of regulation was somewhat vague and any actual implementation required the unanimous approval of all EU Member States so the whole issue was put off until after the Euro was introduced in 1999.
Furthermore back to the US perspective the Single Europe Act back from 1986 essentially gave US banks in London the power to operate across the entire EU but solely under the supervision of national UK regulators which as things in the UK typically work are very pro American and Atlanticist and were known to practice a "light touch" form of regulation. From a US perspective, I think you call this icing on the cake. What is clear is once the Euro was introduced EU Member States governments as a whole were very unenthusiastic to the idea of a single supervisor but the UK, in particular, was very opposed to this transfer of sovereignty to Brussels. In fact, many in the UK joked that the EU "already" had a single bank regulator that of the UK FSA in charge of the City of London. Was this view on the part of the UK taken in part to please the US? Probably not but it was a view that was widely supported in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-American circles in the early 2000s(Remember this was around the time of the Iraq War)
Now, this probably would have to be a whole article on my part but suffice to say the EU did finally get a single EU bank regulator after the Eurozone crisis(in part due to the UK and David Cameron relenting on their historic opposition in 2014) but also one only covering the Eurozone. Then after that, we of course have Brexit with US Banks based in London losing their Single Europe Act "passporting" rights and having to move operations to the EU27 from London as of January 1st this year and now coming under the full authority of the European Central Bank regulation and supervision department(accountable to the usual anti-American suspects in Brussels). But this probably requires me to write a whole article on these implications a lot of which are not clear at this point.
Anyways hopefully I might get around to writing my own article on the further implications of these recent changes in the EU in the near future.