>>>>http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/13/business/housing.php?page=1
>>>
>>>One country that will come out of this well may be Germany. Their banks have never gone into the loan free for all we have had here. Its still quite hard to get homeloans so prices have not soared as they have in other European countries.
>>
>>While it is true that inner city housing prices are low compared to London or Paris, German taxpayers will shoulder part of the subprime mess. German banks have taken over quite a few packages of that trash and banking CEO#s already ask for gvmt handouts (a small bank collapsed, but nothing serious). But in a peculiar twist gvmt owned banks seem to have taken a larger bite out of the subprime mess, making the taxpayer directly involved without intermediate private shareholders. Politicians are seen on these boards even more often than on other boards...
>>
>>And some banks had their faces put directly to the feces with the housing build up in former east germany: tax subsidies directly inflating prices "over there" with no ROI in sight, esp. for private investors. There's a sucker born every minute.
>
>Thomas
>
>the way you have been able to absorb the former East Germany without rioting in the streets is a testament to Germanies economic strength.

=Stuff(aboveSentence, Rat(" ", aboveSentence, 2), 0, " former")

Loss of est. 15% of state controlled "goods" like infrastructure money moved "over there" and a tax hike of 5% is nothing against the shift from to the left and a 5 party system made necessary by allowing in about 10% (8 million) far to the left of the former equilibrium point. Or to put it otherwise: a sizable chunk of those people "good for the economy" had left the former eastern states when they saw a chance. Still, in other centuries taxes above 10% where reasons to topple nobility...