German WOTD

Schwimmender Gashafen als Anlandepunkt für internationale Flüssiggastanker

germanwotd — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00:52 +0000

“Floating gas harbor as a landing point for international liquid gas tankers.” Steve Coll wrote that the first liquid natural gas (L.N.G.) contract was signed between Britain and Algeria in 1961, with conversion plants and transport ships that used refrigeration. Figuring out how to engineer natural gas into liquid forms made it possible to ship it cheaply around the world and created an international gas market. Initially the big oil companies searched for and developed gas fields outside their home countries, liquefying and exporting Middle Eastern and African natural gas instead of the pre-shipping method of just burning or flaring it off at the wellhead because building, protecting and maintaining pipelines requires quantities of time, money and cooperation that companies and countries aren’t always prepared to invest. Later, fracked gas from doing… terrible things to domestic rock was sold in the new gas market created. Much initial L.N.G. tech investment was driven by South Korea and Japan’s need for power, Coll wrote.

South Korean shipyards are now building giant floating harbors where international L.N.G. tankers can dock and unload. These giant floating harbors—they must be interesting-looking!—can be sailed around the world. They will make it possible for countries that previously had no natural gas or were dependent on e.g. one pipeline to buy gas at relatively competitive international prices. Might also reduce the total number of lands willing to frack themselves to a few fracking “specialist” countries.

(SHVIM men dare GAUZE haw fen olz ON lond ah POONKT foor internot SEE OWN ALL ah FLOOSS ig gauze tonk ah.)

Sponsoring-Karten

germanwotd — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:00:55 +0000

“Shponsoring tickets,” a new kind of money-equivalent created by big soccer and big stadiums. Shponsoring tickets nominally worth hundreds of thousands of euros can be printed for each large soccer game, apparently.

After auditors found valuable sheafs of these lying around in soccer club safes, German companies started developing accounting procedures to document gifted sports tickets. Now when German companies are caught in some other impropriety people point out it’s ridiculous that … isn’t being tracked as carefully as soccer tickets.

(SHPON soar ingk CAW ten.)

Der Dickmacher

germanwotd — Sun, 19 May 2013 08:00:09 +0000

“The thickmaker,” sugar. On 23 April 2013 the European Federal Cartel Authority carried out razzias at sugar processing plant company offices in four countries for suspected price fixing from 2004 to 2011. Sugar’s well-meant but interestingly unusual regulatory status in Europe has led to a lack of transparancy that apparently made it possible for pricing questions to arise. By law, 15% of European sugar must be imported from developing countries. European farmers who grow the roots from which the remaining 85% is processed are guaranteed a minimum price, but at strictly controlled quantities. Sugar beet farmers have to sell their product to the sugar-processing factories; very little sugar is traded on the open market. The six largest sugar processing companies control 80% of the European sugar market, writes the Süddeutsche. Two German sugar processors control 40% of the European market. The processing factories set the prices, which do not always track with world sugar prices. German consumers have been paying between EUR 0.60 and 1.00 per kilo (annual consumption averages ~36 kg/year/German). Sugar root farmers were getting 27 euros per ton until 2012 when, after a good harvest, the price jumped to 45 to 50 euros per ton.

(Dare DICK maw caw.)

Bundeskartellamtliche Bußgeldleitlinien

germanwotd — Sat, 18 May 2013 08:00:52 +0000

The German Federal Cartel Authority‘s fining guidelines. Appeals to the record-breaking fine imposed on some cement companies for anticompetitive behavior in the 1990′s have prompted discussion of the rules governing Germany’s current maximum limit on cartel fines and how those rules do or do not fit into European and other international structures.

According to Hans Jürgen Meyer-Lindemann’s 08 May 2013 article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Cartel Authority updated its relevant rules in 2006 to match European regulations. IIUC, the German fine for collusion is based on the company concerned’s total collusion sales, averaging 20% of that for the “base fine”; but according to European and now German law the fine cannot exceed 10% of the total worldwide gross from the fiscal year before the year the sanction is imposed. Mr. Meyer-Lindemann wrote that the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg decreed for this purpose the definition of the company should be given a broad interpretation, and thus according to the ECJ not just a national subsidiary’s but the parent corporation’s entire worldwide sales should be used in calculating a maximum upper limit for fines for cartel law violations.

Mr. Meyer-Lindemann felt there remain some loose ends in conforming German to European regulations on this issue. Under European law, he said international corporation parent companies have responsibility in antitrust violations committed by their European subsidiaries. The German supreme court in Karlsruhe’s recent decision on the appeal to the cement companies’ cartel fine merely dealt with how to use international corporate assets to calculate more appropriate maximum antitrust fines and did not deal with assigning responsibility when international corporations are involved in such matters. The European approach of having a 10% maximum limit to cartel fines, he wrote, “has been massively criticized by some German commentators.”

(BOON dess car TELL omt lichh ah BOOSS geld LIGHT lean ian.)

“Nicht mit Ruhm bekleckert”

germanwotd — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:00:41 +0000

“Didn’t dribble glory on themselves,” in predicting the 2008 global financial troubles—from Thomas Thiel’s review of social scientist and publicist Werner Rügemer‘s 2012 book about the world’s three major financial ratings agencies.

In his book, Rügemer discussed the “curious financing model” in which clients pay for the grades they receive. Managerially, Rügemer said, many of the same people are members of the boards of the big three ratings agencies, the companies that own the ratings agencies, and the ratings agencies’ clients. Thiel:

“The deeper Rügemer goes into the ownership relationships, the more there unfolds a conglomerate of hedge funds, banks and companies that is worrying in how functionally interwoven it is. Market leader Standard & Poor’s for example belongs to the media house McGraw Hill, which mainly belongs to large investment funds such as BlackRock and Vanguard. These funds own many companies that are regularly/standardly/by default evaluated by the ratings agencies. In addition, many of the same funds are the shareholders behind Moody’s and S&P, such as the investment giant Capital Group. Seated on the supervisory boards (Aufsichtsrat) of the agencies there are companies like Coca-Cola or the pharma company Eli Lilly, plus banks and insurance companies such as Allianz, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.”

McGraw Hill owns another agency that is very important for setting world oil prices: Platts. Der Spiegel said Platts is the world’s largest energy information service. On Tuesday, 14 May 2013, the EU raided Platts’ London offices and offices of three big European oil companies, Shell (Holland), Statoil (Norway) and BP (UK), seeking information about price fixing allegedly achieved by slight distortions of data going into Platts. If said international oil price distortion occurred, it may have started in 2002.

Background info from the Wall Street Journal: the international “physical-oil market” is worth $2.5 trillion. “Index-publishing firms like Platts derive their prices from self-reported transaction data from participants in deals.”

(Nicked mitt ROOM bah KLECK aht.)

Achtung, die Historiker kommen

germanwotd — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:00:17 +0000

“Here come the historians.” For about a year now, reported tagesschau.de, historians have been studying the influence of ex-Nazis within post-WWII German federal ministries other than the Foreign Service (which a historians commission already investigated from 2005 to 2010 at Joschka Fischer’s instigation). At Justice, for example, historians found nearly half the top bureaucrats after WWII had a Nazi past or “eine sehr starke NS-Belastung,” “a quite strong Nazi load.” The head of the Chancellery (Adenauer’s chief of staff) for ten years after the war had helped write the “race laws” in the 1930′s, for example.

Marburg historian Eckart Conze said Joschka’s initial investigation found more Nazis worked at high positions in the Foreign Office e.g. in 1951–52 than in 1937–38.

To uncover more NSDAP-related sins of omission and commission in West German legislation, regulation and adjudication, the historians want to continue the project by churning through thousands of relevant documents that have not yet been read through in this investigation.

(OCHH toong, dee hist OR ick ah COM men.)

Aufbrechen

germanwotd — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:00:38 +0000

To sally forth, break camp, hit the road, dehisce. After the SMV didn’t get the supermajority required at the recent German Pirate Party convention, party chair, trained economic sociologist (Diplom-Sozialwirt) and Defense Department employee Bernd Schlömer gave a very brief and inspiring speech:

“Ja ja ja, times are bad, we’re all going to die. We can abrade ourselves down with this. We can reflect on it. We can feel sorry for ourselves. We can curse, seek process solutions, propose tools. We can keep doing these things, but we shouldn’t. Let’s move on out, make things clear, make change. Now is the time to have fun, show joy, talk unencumberedly with people. Let’s attack.”

“Ja ja ja, es gibt schlechte Zeiten, wir werden alle sterben, man kann sich daran abarbeiten, reflektieren und sich bemitleiden. Man kann Schuld zuweisen. Man kann schimpfen, nach Verfahrenslösungen suchen, Tools vorschlagen. Man kann so weitermachen, aber sollte es nicht tun. Aufbrechen, klarmachen, ändern. Es ist jetzt an der Zeit Spass zu haben, Freude zu zeigen, unbelastet aufzutreten: greifen wir an.”

(OW! f brechh en.)

Europaweit

germanwotd — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:00:52 +0000

“Europe-wide.” A controversial Arte documentary has drawn attention to the new EU water guideline the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Michel Barnier (of Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party) is about to issue in which local European government water projects will accept bids from all of Europe. Water activist Jean-Luc Touly warned the current plans for the guideline will make it difficult for public utilities to compete against profit-driven private utilities that are, he said, not primarily motivated by consumers’ best interests. 80% of the French water market has been privatized, the 2010 Arte documentary “Water Makes Money” claims to show instances of corruption in that French privatization and there was an increase in French water quality problems post-privatization, Touly said.

Around the world, many privatization contracts appear to have gone to subsidiaries of just a few big companies such as Bechtel (USA), Enron (USA, now spectacularly bankrupt), RWE (Germany) and Suez/Veolia (France). Opening privatization of city water utilities to Europe-wide bidding might encourage reductions in international competition among these providers.

(Oy ROPE a v eye t.)

Rekommunalisierung

germanwotd — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:00:19 +0000

“Recommunalization,” remunicipalization. A twenty-first-century response to the twentieth century’s privatization trend. After experimenting with water privatization for over a century, for example, many French towns are now reacquiring privatized, for-profit utilities and turning them back into not-for-profit services.

This accords with the ideas of the great groundbreaking French engineer Henry Darcy who experimented with pipe, sand filtration and spring sources to create a technologically and socially advanced water system for the town of Dijon in 1840, a project he then carefully documented in a beautiful book published in 1856. My Texas colleague Patricia Bobeck translated it into English, including the following:

“As much as possible, one should favor the free drawing of water because it is necessary for public health. A city that cares for the interest of the poor class should not limit their water, just as daytime and light are not limited.”

[The Public Fountains of the City of Dijon, 42.]

Austerity measures may be increasing pressure on governments of financially troubled EU countries to sell off their water and other utilities such as Greece’s recent sale of 33% of the Greek state lottery and gambling organizer OPAP to the Czech-led consortium Emma Delta for 712 million euros (of which 60 million was dividends on profits from 2012). Wikipedia says OPAP is Europe’s largest betting firm and as of 2008 the Greek government only owned 34% of it.

(RAY com you noll iz EAR oong.)

Schlichtungsstelle für Flugreisende

germanwotd — Sun, 12 May 2013 08:00:59 +0000

“Arbitration board for air passengers.” Created on 03 May 2013 by the Bundesrat to support consumers traveling by air. Starting November 2013, passengers in Germany can contact this office to seek information about passenger rights and financial remuneration from airports and airlines after e.g. delayed connections, missed connections and/or lost luggage. What airlines owe passengers after which screwups is also being defined in regulations.

(SCHLICHH toongz shtell ah foor FLOOG rye zen dah.)