By P Gosselin
Germany’s “Blackout News” reports the destructive consequences of Germany’s soaring energy prices and unstable power supply.
Chart: BDEW
German electricity 3 times more expensive
Firstly Blackout News reports how Germany’s electricity price is three time higher than it is in USA:
The German electricity price is three times as high as in the USA. Criticism is being voiced about Germany’s energy policy. Financial expert Jan Viebig criticizes the fact that the phase-out of coal and nuclear energy is not well coordinated with the European Union. Energy policy has three main objectives: low prices, security of supply and environmental protection with regard to CO₂ emissions. German energy policy performs poorly in all three areas (Focus: 03 November 2023).”
“Massive job cuts” at Bayer
Next the German site reports how Leverkusen-based pharmaceutical and agrochemical group Bayer plans “massive job cuts.”
Moreover:
By the end of the year, the Group intends to cut several management levels, which will lead to a significant reduction in the workforce. This step is considered necessary due to the current business performance (rp-online: 9 November 2023).”
250-year old German iron foundry files for insolvency
Another victim of Germany’s green policies is renowned iron foundry and automotive supplier Eisenwerk Hasenclever & Sohn:
Eisenwerk Hasenclever & Sohn is an important player in the foundry industry. It has long supplied well-known car manufacturers such as Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford and Porsche. However, the company is now facing a serious crisis. Despite a proud history of 250 years, in which Hasenclever has made impressive progress and always aimed to establish itself as a leading European supplier in the industry, it has now filed for insolvency (wiwo: 7 November 2023).”
We can only speculate what happens next at this iron foundry. Will it be sold off in pieces and scattered abroad – leaving the region a rust belt?
Machine builder Homag to lay off 600
The latest bad news came just yesterday; machinery builder Homag, based in Schopfloch, Baden-Württemberg, has announced that it will cut some 600 jobs worldwide.
This decision is a reaction to the declining demand for its products. In Germany, around 35 jobs are to be affected. The measure aims to achieve savings of around 25 million euros in the coming year and around 50 million euros annually from 2025. Despite the demand for woodworking machines in many branches of industry, the company expects the coming year to be challenging due to unexpectedly weak order figures (stuttgarter-nachrichten: 7 November 2023).”
There are no optimistic economic signals in sight. Energy prices, inflation and catastrophic economic policies are rapidly sinking the German economic battleship and prosperity.
There’s no doubt that the power prices are going up and similar, no doubt that job losses are occurring.
BUT…. Has any of the management teams associated with these losses stated that the cause was rising power costs?
As we say to those who follow the climate cult, correlation does not equal causation. We should be equally stout in our claims as we wish to hold the other side.
I’d love to see one company state the bleeding obvious, that being, government decisions HAVE cost jobs. Then again, they’d be off the gravy train if that got out.
It is well known that Toyota resisted the pressure to move to EV’s as premature saying hybrids were a better solution. In an article on the newest Camry that will be sold only as a hybrid, this sentence showed what a good decision this was,
Earlier this month, the car company reported record-breaking profit, thanks in part to sales of hybrid vehicles, which it sells more of than any other automaker.
don’t know if this link to the article will work but will give it a go.
https://emailshare.cmail19.com/t/n/d-l-8b01d91583a711eebc66f47579968a1d-l-d-r-l/
I must have missed the part in the post where it said one thing definitively caused the other. Oh wait, I didn’t. Common sense would tell you that high energy prices would be an unsustainable cost burden, particularly with energy-intensive industries.
You must have skipped the first line….
Germany’s “Blackout News” reports the destructive consequences of Germany’s soaring energy prices and unstable power supply.
Masters of the Obvious, episode 7,253.
Klaus Schwab must be smiling.
That is one hell of a scary fixed grin. Botox isn’t always the answer!
Finding an actual image of Schwab with a smile on his face was unproductive. The obviously photoshopped job seemed appropriate for the intended message.
Color him green and he’d look like Jim Carey’s Grinch
The Grinch that stole the world!
I wonder why the chart stops H2/2022 altough we are almost in 2024?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267541/germany-monthly-wholesale-electricity-price/
The only thing bad for germany is this constant scaremongering.
The article s mostly hyperbole. But you overshoot by orders of magnitude in the other direction. Only a subjective mind could conclude that things are rosy in GER’s electricity sector. I believe what you wrote is silly, frankly.
I don’t say it’s rosy, absolutly not. Just getting tired of the german doomsday predictions of the last decades – yet still germany manages just fine.
And I say that the H2/2022 cutoff is there to push an agenda that wouldn’t be doable with more up-to-date data.
Just fine? What’s improved with newer data, which you obviously have.
I, and other rational people, never bought into the doomsday predictions of the last 4 decades … we got tired of the predictions 30 years ago – and the world carries on.
I do say it (the world climate) is rosy … warmer is better.
What isn’t rosy are the inevitable & obvious outcomes that are associated with wasted resources & money that are used in an attempt to alter something that doesn’t need to be (and really can’t be) altered.
You do realize that the article references retail consumer price whereas your link shows wholesale prices? Wholesale electricity prices are much more market based than retail consumer prices due to regulation.
And that if the original reporting structure is by full years –> H2 2022 means the end of 2022 – that we are not yet at the end of 2023 and so don’t know what the 2023 price is yet?
Or put another way: if 40.07 euro cents per kWh is 3x US prices, then 32.16 euro cents per kWh is still a bit under 2.5x US prices.
Does this change anything from the article’s conclusion?
What is bad for Germany is its ongoing deindustrialization.
Anyone who says this is not happening is deluded.
Those denying the correlation will be eagerly stepping forward to purchase BMW automobiles assembled in the dark.
This is not unexpected; “de-development“, as the Ehrlichs and Holdren put it, was never going to be remotely painless. Far from it. As prices boomerang upwards in the fatherland, the motherland has some interesting news – if you can believe it, of course….
“UK inflation drops sharply to 4.6% as energy prices fall
The UK’s annual inflation rate fell sharply to 4.6% in October on the back of cheaper gas and electricity in the biggest drop for more than three decades.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/15/uk-inflation-drops-gas-electricity-prices-interest-rates
However, alleged cheaper energy prices aren’t going to save, say, the steel industry which seems hell bent on going into the scrap steel game. Get your virgin steel abroad.
It is impossible to verify the Guardian (and BBCs) claims on energy prices at this point in time. The heating went on in earnest a couple of weeks ago. It seems clear that Germany and German industry is leading the charge into the economic abyss. This is UNhinged peer pressure. When you have been the global villain for 80 years or more I would imagine you buckle that little bit easier under pressure.
From Energiewende to Zerstörung und Elend
On the back of cheaper gas and electricity? Mine hasn’t reduced. This must be false, my shopping bill is increasing by 5% every time I shop, and I am far from fat! One cannot believe a word any more, take petrol and Diesel, have they reduced after the low oil price recently? Never!
I did stress the point: if you can believe it, of course….
Caution remains the order of the day until the first bill hits the mat. I’ve also taken the time and trouble to stock up on kindling, wood, paper and coal.
That should really irk the Guardianistas.
Cheaper is relative. A lot of the inflation “moderation” going on right now is simply less increases upon the massive jumps last year.
What really matters for people is real income.
I don’t track UK real income, but US real income growth had been negative for 20+ months as of July 2023.
Or put another way: income growth under Trump has been around the same as income growth under Biden, but real income growth was positive (to a record level) under Trump whereas real income growth under Biden is negative (also pretty much to a record level).
Note I am not ascribing credit or blame to either – merely describing what has been happening.
I would not be surprised that UK real income has been negative for a long time as well, ditto Germany etc.
People in the US, EU and UK who aren’t independently wealthy are riled up for a reason.
“There are no optimistic economic signals in sight. Energy prices, inflation and catastrophic economic policies are rapidly sinking the German economic battleship and prosperity.”
And as this climate lunacy cancer metastasizes – it may result in a world wide depression. Yes, China, India et. al. will be using fossil fuels like never before but their economies can’t sustain the planet’s economy the way Europe and North America can- and as they go down, the world will go down. I think the climate skeptics will need to step up their game before its too late.
There is no doubt that Germany is in a mess economically and its politics are at the root of it. Energiewende was sustained by Russian gas, and Germany had to face the hard choice of whether to buy it or not. Worse, if US support for Ukraine falters, Ukraine will have no reason not to take out every pipeline to and from Russia and in Russia that it can find, and target. Placing the virtue signallers of Europe in a right buggers muddle.
As one US commentator has remarked, Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons on condition that Russia wouldn’t invade them and the West would support them.
Russia has already reneged on that memorandum. If the US does as well, then Ukraine will feel perfectly entitled to rapidly redevelop nuclear weapons.
I am sorry to distract from the climate change and renewable energy focus of WUWT, but there are wider geopolitical implications in play here.
To some extent it makes a certain amount of sense to view the whole climate change/renewable energy boondoggle through the lens of the final great Resource War that Russia and China are engaged in.
No they have not, they went to rescue the civilians being genocided so Cargill, Monsanto and Tyson can take the farming lands. We won’t discuss those bio-warfare labs now.
If you still don’t know about Victoria Nuland and her Blinken fiends stirring civil war in Ukraine 2014, you have no right to speak on the subject, without educating yourself first. Russia is not invading, otherwise Kiev would be a pile of rubble, no matter how many obsolete tanks America sold Ziolenskyii..yiyi.
Here’s the real reason Putin invaded Ukraine: Greed, and Delusions of Empire.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4064431-wagner-chief-says-russias-war-in-ukraine-intended-to-benefit-elites-accuses-moscow-of-lying/
“No they have not, they went to rescue the civilians being genocided …”
Shooting back at Russian soldiers in civilian clothes is no genocide. If you don’t know that Russian soldiers started the “civil” war in 2014 you have no right to speak on the subject.
But even if you’re naive enough to believe Putin’s claim of just going in to Ukraine protect ethnic Russians, Russia would be stating that they’d refuse to accept Donbas as a territory because of the agreement to respect Ukraine’s borders. (If they hadn’t shattered it by invading and annexing Crimea). Instead they are trying to hold another set of referendums at gunpoint.
Kyev was not rescued by obsolete tanks but by the resolute force of the Ukrainian people and partially by the incompetence of the Russia Army.
Ukraine was NEVER a nuclear power.
They didn’t have the control codes.
The existence of nuclear weapons on your territory that you don’t control doesn’t make you a nuclear power, any more than US nuclear weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey make those countries nuclear powers.
Nor is your analysis of Ukrainian action on pipelines, any more sensible. Ukraine derives enormous revenue from transit fees over these pipelines; transit fees which they are collecting even as we speak during a shooting war. These transit fees are even more critical now that pretty much the entirety of Ukrainian heavy industry is now Russian.
Transit fees as well as admitting that they’ve been illegally siphoning off gas for their own use for years before the war. Ukraine used the Budapest memorandum as a ‘get out of jail free’ card, poking the Russian bear at every opportunity, knowing that the USA was backing them – also, by a strict interpretation of the memorandum, the US broke it first, by meddling in Ukraine internal affairs. It’s very murky water to go fishing in, nobody has clean hands in this affair.
Nothing you said is even remotely close to being accurate. Is that you Ivan? I thought so.
‘If the US does as well”?
The US already did under Obama when HE provided approval to Russia to take Crimea in 2014.
Clinton “promised” the US would protect Ukraine. Brandon forced Ukraine to stop the process of ferreting out corruption so Hunter could get the gravy. Obama failed to keep Clinton’s promise.
Don’t forget that the Russians eastern Ukraine moved there after Stalin starved MILLIONS of Ukrainians to make room for the Russian migration. Russia has no “right” to those areas.
See cilo’s crap post, this post is a response to it also.
Drake, so you’re telling us that we fought the Crimean war against the Ukrainians, not the Russians?
That the city of Odessa wasn’t founded by Catherine the Great of Russia?
The reason Russia hasn’t flattened the city of Odessa is not just because they regard it as a useful port on the Black Sea. They regard it as a Russian city.
Get a grip, mate.
Stalin indiscriminately starved millions of ethnic Russians and Kazakhs, with Kazakhs hit the most if we consider % of population killed. Stalin was Georgian and had no agenda of making room for Russians in Ukraine or anywhere else. Stalin actively supported “corenization” of Ukraine and other ethnic republics in USSR.
Russia’s history in Ukraine and Crimea didn’t begin in the 20th century. Go back to the 16th century to understand the issues.
The only way Ukraine can develop nuclear weapons is the same way they can fight Russia. By a democrat administration increasing our national debt to pay Ukraine $billions every year, or more likely a democrat administration placing nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Ukraine will be financially bankrupt for at least a decade.
These events are incredible given Germany’s reputation in industry, etc. I’m just astounded. Are we seeing the backlash of all those students who took 5-6 years to complete the university studies that used to take them three?
I don’t think things are as bad as the article says. Germany just sent hundreds of millions to Ukraine, they are still throwing billions at Israel, and they increased military spending in line with US demands.
They must be doing very well indeed, so this page is just fake news.
Oder?
Germany is rather adept at the art of creative accounting. Possibly one of the only Thatcherite ideas to be taken up by the bosch. But unlike the UK, Germany has a written constitution…
“German top court strikes down €60bn climate funding”
Germany’s top court has ruled the government broke the law with a €60bn off-budget fund, throwing Berlin’s plans for financing its energy transition and climate policy into disarray.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=germany+total+borrowing+to+fund+policies&ia=web
You’d never ever get an unconstitutional ruling in the UK. Anything goes.
Have no UK politicians dared to suggest a constitution? Or would that be considered unBritish due to being “ruled” by royalty?
Joseph, this is the Parliamentary dictatorship (Est. 1660) we are talking about. Despite the losses over the centuries (votes for ordinary men and then later for some women, then all women) it retain a firm grip and control and without bloodshed it doesn’t loosen its grip one iota.
Can you name a single turkey who voted for Christmas (or Thanksgiving)?
If nobody voted at the next election, not a single vote, Charles the Halfwit would appoint one of them as a caretaker until they came up with a fudge.
That and ornamentation/ceremony is what the fig-leaf monarchy is for.
‘If you need a Constitution, we have one we’re not using’ was the punch line of a famous cartoon dialogue between FDR and Stalin.
The irony is, Frank, the British had a major hand in drafting the West German Constitution
We can give them more democracy than would ever be tolerated at home
What a GREAT last line!
Pretty much what’s occuring in the U.S.A.
We have a constitution. We’ve had a constitution for hundreds of years before the United States got theirs. The UK constitution is a body of Law that use laws and precedents as the written constitution, it can adapt and evolve as the country changes and isn’t cast in 250 year-old stone like a written constitution would be.
presumably there are advantages and disadvantages of both
as to whether or not the American constitution is cast in stone- most scholars wouldn’t agree with that- though hard core conservatives would- it’s a primary cause of strife here, this debate- it doesn’t address many issues which is why existing laws and precedence is important here too
Well the German financial spigot may be running dry.
Why else:
“BRUSSELS/BUDAPEST (Reuters) -The European Union will be able work around any Hungarian veto and give Ukraine 50 billion euros ($53.4 bln) in aid, officials in the bloc said, as Kyiv struggles to push back Russia’s invasion 21 months into the war.”
??
They plan to issue Euro Bonds, effectively forcing EU members to take out further loans to further finance a lost cause. A program which originated in Washington DC, circa 1990.
A war, I might add, that even the neo-Cons in Washington are beginning to admit is hopelessly lost.
Oh well, never mind. They’ve got a new war to get involved in now in the Middle East.
“A war, I might add, that even the neo-Cons in Washington are beginning to admit is hopelessly lost.”
Who are these mysterious Neo-cons?
Are you talking about George Will? Does George have that much influence in Washington DC, that he can direct where the U.S. should begin its next war?
It sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
Now, no doubt there are those in Washington DC who profit from war, but there’s no evidence they are neo-cons, as you call them.
I would like to see a list of the names of people who are neo-cons. Are they really consevatives? No evidence for that. No evidence for neo-con manipulation of U.S. foreign policy at all.
Is Hillary Clinton a neo-con?
“It sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.”
You do realize that now translates to “spoiler alert” right?
Even the MSM is starting to offer up opinions that Ukraine is losing.
I see reports that Ukraine is winning.
Strati, thanks I hadn’t heard the good news out of Germany. The article ends by stating.
The ruling against the government means it needs to find money for the climate fund elsewhere, challenging in the current tight budget environment and amid discord in the coalition.
Disagree, they don’t need to find money for the climate fund, they need to use this blessing to totally and completely vacate their energiewende insanity.
The money they are throwing away is missing elsewhere in Germany.
You can spend a lot of money on military without your nation “doing well” as we can all see with America.
Von der Lyin’ funnelled the money elsewhere leaving the Bundeswehr with broomsticks…
Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/19/germanys-army-is-so-under-equipped-that-it-used-broomsticks-instead-of-machine-guns/
In the land that revolutionised modern war that has to be Uber embarrassing
No electricity and no guns.
Can German politicians get any worse?
“The urge to serve foreign interests, even if this is only possible at the expense of national interests, is a disease whose geographical spread is limited to Germany”
It’s told that Bismarck said so. 😀
It’s just one of the thousands of scaremongering articles about the “sick man of europe” in the last decades. If only one percent of them came true, germany would be a smouldering ruin of no-go zones by now.
The articles are correct.
What is incorrect is your understanding of what these data points mean.
Deindustrialization takes time. It took around 15 years for the US to complete deindustrialization in favor of China, but that was purely labor price based.
In Germany’s case, it will be faster but it won’t be overnight.
And the implications are going to be severe: the German social safety net is primarily underwritten by the massive exports and export profits.
Take the exports and export profits away, how then does the social spending keep up? How does that impact Germany society and politics?
There is a reason why AfD is now the 2nd highest polling political party in Germany.
2050…. That gives us all 27 years to follow suit.
I don’t see that coming to pass
Have you seen the state of the Deutschmark zone?
Siemens Energy Reviews Wind Turbine Business After Massive Loss
Siemens Energy is reviewing the scope of activities at its wind turbine-making unit, Siemens Gamesa, as quality issues, rising costs, and ramp-up challenges in the wind business dragged the company into a net loss of $5 billion for the 2023 fiscal year.
Siemens Energy booked a net loss of $4.98 billion (4.59 billion euros) for the 2023 fiscal year as the good performance of the conventional business was overshadowed by the setbacks in the wind business.
Gamesa is/ was a Spanish firm, I believe. Siemens not doing their due diligence, but its a virus breaking out all over the wind turbine industry.
Just because Germany has abrogated its traditional role as the fiscal conservative in the ECB doesn’t mean that idiotic ECB money printing is a good thing.
Those of us who understand economic reality are overjoyed at the real world experiment of deindustrialization plus massive spending going on in Europe right now in general, and in Germany in particular.
It is entirely ironic that Germany had beaten up the PIIGS following the Global Financial Crisis for deficit spending but has no problem now with 3% deficit spending itself.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Germany.
Isn’t deindustrializing Germany a bit like killing the Golden Goose? I had thought that the German economy, in particular it’s manufacturing, was the basis for the money and clout the EU could throw around.
Continued price rises for energy will only weaken both Germany and the rest of the EU; and printing money to cover up your economic shortfalls will only work short term, and dig the hole even deeper! A reality our organized criminal government here in the US will have to deal with in the near future!
You talk like this is a bug, when it’s a feature. It all becomes clearer, when you remember that the new messiah, Baal Gates, is planning for only 300 million survivors, the rest of us to hell!
Have you noticed how “academia” is talking about an economy where you voluntarily submit to personal service to a sponsor, because actual jobs there will not be? In other words, universal slavery for the non-investing class, and citizenship for those who can afford it?
That Great Reset will balance the Book of all Life…and we’ll own nothing!
Yep Germany USED to be the only remaining net contributor to the EU funding with 26 net takers. I wonder what the EU will do next? Reduce the amounts given out still further?
Buy more printing presses I imagine! You can’t safely reduce the whole bread and circuses schtick
That may be showing up in the international markets. Compare the euro exchange rate over the last 20 years and it shows a prominent declining trend. Not a good sign for Europe.
That many of its Citizens are dealing with now. (Tho’ the illegals are getting lots of ‘assistance’)
What is hapoening in Germany now shows how brilliant the Brits were to leave the EU. Now they have to regain control from Remainers of their government – unfortunately that’s a lot more difficult. Basically they have to throw out Rishi Sunak’s half of the uniparty at the next election, then endure 5 more years before they can throw out Keir Starmer and the other half. And it might even take one or two more 5-year steps to complete the process.
But this is the fourth reich with a stiff Coudenhove-Kalergi bent
Everybody who is anybody has won the Charlemagne prize….
Whattaboy!!! I’ve decided the name for you people is “Blancophobes”, but I am looking for something that better captures your hatred.
“understand economic realities” indeed!
…but please elaborate.
Sarc tag. I got it but about 7 others didn’t.
Ten minuses, as I log in.
What can I say, mundane people distrust and fear those born with a sixth sense of humour?
Mostly, I think the majority suffer from curtailed comprehension of the written word. And information overload, oh deary, the information overload…
Instead of shuttering industry on the back end, they should have started by terminating extended holiday for workers in order to wake everyone up to the emergency issues and political consequences.
Consequences can be pesky. …. But Hey, this story tells us that USA energy prices can be tripled before everything is completely ruined.so plan on that.
Hey, Coach! I thought that that was the primary purpose of the incredibly mis-named Inflation Recovery Act!? The current American criminal regime seems intent on destroying the US economy and placing China in the position of sole global hegemon!
Just look at the gyrations being exhibited by Gov. Gruesome in Commiefornia after he went and got a stern talking to by his idol; Chairman-for-Life Xi! When asked about solutions to the homeless problem Chairman Xi probably just said, “Uyghurs!” and Gavin scurried home and cleaned up the kitty litter box-by-the Bay! Jordan Peterson has been admonishing him to clean up his room for years now, and Xi gets him to do it by merely coming over for a visit; talk about a bromance!
I wonder what the people in San Francisco think? Their politicians leave the city filthy and overrun with homeless mental patients, but when Xi comes to visit, all of that disappears from the scene overnight.
The U.S. politicians can disappear the ugliness overnight for a communist dictator but won’t do the same for the people living in San Francisco.
If I lived in San Francisco, I wouldn’t vote for those guys anymore.
2 things, vis a vis California:
Our utility is fighting for a 30% price increase, so there’s that.
As the saying goes, the devil is in the details.
Just look closely at the bar chart presented at the top of the above article that shows the end-user cost per kWh electricity in second half 2022 compared to 2021 and preceding years. In particular, note:
1) the dark red component “Acquisition/sales”—a broad-ranging, confusing label if I ever saw one—nearly tripled H2/2022 compared to 2021 . . . what’s up with that?,
2) meanwhile, the blue component “Renewable surcharge” was reduced by a factor of about four . . . what’s up with that? . . . especially it happening so fast?
Now, it’s not hard to see what is happening: it’s called the ol’ shell game, whereby politicians and bureaucrats mislabel things to cover up their idiotic mistakes . . . something they know the sheeple will begrudgingly accept, not wanting to take the time necessary to dig out the truth.
If this is true, and I sense that it is, then the Marxist plan to kill capitalism is working. For those that doubt energy costs are impacting businesses enough to shutter them do you think the media would report that?
For the true capitalist, money is nothing, a game, “a way to keep score of who’s winning”. In this game, there is only one rule: Winner takes all.
So, once the game is played out, and all the capital belongs to one account, how does that differ from the communist dream of confiscating all property under one Party?
It is a great victory for the Bolshevik, that we think communism and capitalism are opposites. Marx was just a social media influencer of his day, paid to scribble misanthropic nonsense, much like, say, Michael Mann or Jucinda Ardern.
I’m a Free Market advocate. I don’t want to take everyone else’s money away from them, I just want the freedom to do my business without excess government interference.
Capitalism is a pejorative used by Marxists to try to put the Free Market on the same plain as Marxism, Communism, and Socialism. it’s an effort to demonize the Free Market.
I myself belong to the school of “leave me the hell alone, and stop monopolising the resources”. As for free markets, I’ll bother with that the day we banish the concept of subsidies from our collective consciousness. For now I must accept that my government’s economics policy is my State Religion. You can’t argue with religious fanatics, like committed capitalists or dye-in-the-wool commies (every coin has two sides)
In the meantime, I shall diligently p155 off anyone trying to sell Bolshevism as “Western Values”, or belittle said values by associating it with the name of some disagreeable historic character or another. Even if I have to get 5 minuses in one hour for cutting ol’e Marx down a bit.
Civilization, we barely knew ye.
It should be of some concern that if a land war between the West and the East ever breaks out, not only will the West quickly run out of antibiotics and semi-conductors, it will also quickly run out of ISO series ball bearings. Try finding one of those that was made in the Western hemisphere.