In June 2012, the euro crisis was at its height. Before a European summit at the end of the month, several governments called for jointly issued euro bonds. On 26 June, Chancellor Angela Merkel met the members of parliament of her coalition partner, the FDP. According to participants quoted by Reuters, she told them that there would be no total joint liability for debt solange ich lebe, as long as I live. The day before, she had called shared liability for euro zone debt economically wrong and counterproductive.
economics
The “40-Hour” Week
In 2014 Gallup reported that “Adults employed full time in the U.S. report working an average of 47 hours per week.” Nearly four in ten said they worked at least 50 hours. Salaried employees averaged 49 hours.
Paid Family Leave by Pay
In March 2023, 27 percent of American civilian workers had access to paid family leave from their employer. Ninety percent had access to unpaid family leave.
Access follows pay. In March 2021, 6 percent of private industry workers in the lowest-paid tenth had paid family leave. In the highest-paid tenth it was 43 percent.
Flexible, Not Formal
In 2017 and 2018, 57 percent of American wage and salary workers had a flexible work schedule. Only 16 percent had a formal arrangement with their employer that permitted this flexibility. These figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the private sector, schedule flexibility without a formal arrangement was more common than in government jobs: 44 percent compared with 24 percent.
Stairs Counted as Shop Space
On 7 April 1994 the property developer Jürgen Schneider disappeared. His real estate empire collapsed and left debts of about three billion dollars. Craftsmen were left with unpaid bills of more than 50 million marks. Hilmar Kopper, the head of Deutsche Bank, called this sum Peanuts. The word became the Unwort des Jahres, the non-word of the year, for 1994. At his trial in Frankfurt in 1997, Schneider confessed. For a shopping complex in his home city, he had counted stairs, corridors and cellars as rentable space. On that basis he had forecast 57 million marks in rent. Viele Angaben waren objektiv falsch, he said. Many figures were objectively false. He also said that the responsible loan officer had never asked further questions. At Christmas 1997 the regional court sentenced him to six years and nine months in prison.
The Saturday Rule
In February 2021, thirteen first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs gave management a survey of their working lives. They reported more than 95 hours a week and five hours of sleep a night. One wrote, “This is inhumane.” Chief executive David Solomon told staff, “We’re strengthening enforcement of the Saturday rule.” Under the rule, junior bankers should not be expected in the office from 9 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Sunday.
In May 2024 Leo Lukenas III, a 35-year-old associate at Bank of America, died after reportedly working several weeks of more than 100 hours. JPMorgan then told junior bankers that they should typically work no more than 80 hours a week, with exceptions for live deals.
Both rules were set by the banks themselves, after complaints or a death became public.
Faith in the Bundesbank
The Bundesbank keeps a collection of what others have said about it. One entry is attributed to Jacques Delors, then President of the European Commission, in 1992. Nicht alle Deutschen glauben an Gott, aber alle (glauben) an die Bundesbank. Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank. The collection gives the year but no occasion. Another entry quotes Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 26 June 1997. Als Bundeskanzler habe ich manchmal Probleme mit der Bundesbank. Als Bürger bin ich froh, dass es sie gibt. As chancellor, I sometimes have problems with the Bundesbank. As a citizen, I am glad that it exists.
One Worker in Nine
In 2025, 11.2 percent of American wage and salary workers were represented by a union. Union members were 10.0 percent of workers. In the private sector the membership rate was 5.9 percent.
In 1983, the first year with comparable data, the membership rate was 20.1 percent.
The Euro on the Bundesbank Model
In November 2003 the Bundesbank described the rules of the euro as die weitgehend am Vorbild der Deutschen Bundesbank orientierte „Währungsordnung von Maastricht“, the Maastricht monetary order, largely modeled on the Bundesbank. Important elements of the German monetary constitution, it wrote, had entered at the European level.
The goal of price stability and the rules for the European System of Central Banks, it wrote, were the Geschäftsgrundlage, the basis of the deal, for the monetary union when Germany gave up the D-Mark.
One in Six Secretariats
According to the federal economics ministry, Germany holds about 17 percent of all ISO secretariats, the offices that lead the international standards committees. DIN holds almost 29 percent of all secretariats in the European Committee for Standardization. A DIN chart of 2021 put DIN first among national bodies in leading ISO secretariats, ahead of the American ANSI and the British BSI.
A DIN presentation of June 2021 explained the point. Durch die Leitung von Technischen Komitees können strategische Felder besetzt werden. By leading technical committees, strategic fields can be occupied. The same slide carried the saying Wer schreibt, der bleibt. Who writes, remains.
In 2025 the head of DIN added that China, which a few years earlier had led fewer than 2 percent of the committees, now led 11 percent.