On the picture, Czech President Václav Klaus is unveiling a giant Czech-made bucket wheel excavator KK1300; click the picture to zoom in. The Czech ministry of trade has decided to help Czech companies to secure strategic raw materials by helping them to buy up the mines in Germany, Poland, and perhaps Ukraine, and to overtake the rest of Europe a week or two later. ;-)Today, he gave a talk (target URL in German language) at the Czech-German economic forum in Hamburg, Germany. He praised the economic relationships, didn't forget to mention that Czechia's exports to Germany exceed the imports, and perhaps also appreciated tasty bean sprouts they have in Hamburg. ;-)
Before it was determined that the Spanish cucumbers were not the culprit, Klaus criticized the hysterical speculations that Spanish cucumbers were the source of the illness. Even your humble correspondent failed to realize that this claim could have been bogus.
However, he has also been asked about the recent German anti-nuclear decision. At the opening of the forum, he said:
This decision is completely irrational.As you can see, Klaus has a clear attitude even when it comes to prophesies of our top politicians who have "calculated" that the stopping of the German nuclear power plants will make the electricity exactly 30 percent more expensive. ;-)
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Germans are normally rational people but I do not understand this.
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I consider this as a completely irrational, populist step from the German side. This is a sort of political helplessness and it annoys me a lot.
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I admire some of our economists and politicians who know exactly how the stop to nuclear energy will influence the price in the Czech Republic ten years from now. I as an economist am fascinated, these are geniuses. :-)
