Germany’s growth is tanking deeper and deeper, and its economy minister alternates between sugar-coating and scapegoating
Alexey Miller, the longstanding head of Russian energy giant Gazprom, is not known for rhetorical excess. That’s why his recent public statement at the St. Petersburg International Gas Forum should make Europeans, and especially Germans, prick up their ears.
Miller explained that the “artificial destruction of demand” on the EU gas market – that is, Western sanctions and a little US-UK-Ukrainian pipeline bombing “among friends” – has led to a continuing “deindustrialization” of Western Europe that will disrupt its economies “for at least a decade,” in the best-case scenario.
According to more pessimistic expert assessments, we are witnessing the “economic suicide of Europe,” Miller added, with its “locomotive” – a traditional byname for Germany – now the continent’s “sick man.” And that,…