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Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

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Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#51

Post by netsharc »

qayxc wrote: post #27
netsharc wrote: post #13

Also, some people praise the German government for being able to manage an economic powerhouse, but hey, if you keep your currency relatively low to others (by having them all pegged, or even better, replaced with a single currency), of course your production costs stay cheap. But at what cost to your neighbors? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/26/german... https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/magazin…

Not only is your comment completely unrelated to the issue at hand, but your references are as well. The slightly one-sided (who would've guessed from UK publication) Guardian article simply ignores the internal issues that the southern European countries have carried around for decades and doesn't even mention the success of the Baltic states (I wonder why). The NYT article, aside from being 9 years old and written…

Most of the comments here are about German government corruption and incompetence.

The articles maybe old but the facts still haven't changed; the Euro was a bad thing (yeah, yeah, citation needed).

I disagree with your insinuation that a UK publication must be against the Euro (such a cheap conclusion!), the Guardian does lean towards the left, but it is also a pro EU.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#52

Post by k__ »

chii wrote: post #24
solstice wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state government of lower Saxony (the state where VW is based) owns 25% of VW. I don't think that's a coincidence. Edit: looks like it's 20%

how can a company be both owned by, but also regulated by "the same" entity? that is a conflict of interest aint it?

Employment.

The big corps can accumulate more slack that would otherwise need money from the state.

This keeps unemployment rates down, at the cost of giving out tax cuts.

It's always important to keep the powerful people happy.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#53

Post by diffeomorphism »

qwe098cube wrote: post #3

Even worse, the german treasury secretary Olaf Scholz apparently was already informed about the suspicions the BaFin had back in February 2019. https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/scholz-wirecard-101.html

To be fair, so was literally everybody else since FT published its story about this in January 2019 and Singapore raided Wirecard offices in February 2019:

https://www.ft.com/content/284fb1ad-ddc0-45df-a075-0709b3686...

So this seems like a complete non-story.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#54

Post by squiggleblaz »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

Also, under Helmut Kohl, despite advice from experts to use fiber, the German government wired the whole country with copper instead because the ministry of infrastructure at the time had stocks in the copper business leaving the country's internet behind Ukraine or Belarus.[1] If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insa…

Most corruption stats that I have seen are based on perception of corruption. If people perceive it as dodgy but legal, or if people view it as the odd bad egg, then it won't affect perceptions, no matter how rife it is. If it doesn't affect perceptions, it doesn't affect measures.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#56

Post by mschuster91 »

bluelu wrote: post #39
chki wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insanely corrupt the German government and their corporate buddies are. This is obviously not true. There have been numerous uncovered political scandals in Germany that have led to politicians and managers loosing their job. Christian Wulff (Former German President), Guttenberg (f…

Funny thing about Gutenberg is that he was also lobbying the german government in favor of Wirecard. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/karl-theodor-zu-g...

Not just that, Guttenberg was also a key figure in the "Augustus Intelligence" corruption scandal of Philipp Amthor.

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#58

Post by op03 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

Also, under Helmut Kohl, despite advice from experts to use fiber, the German government wired the whole country with copper instead because the ministry of infrastructure at the time had stocks in the copper business leaving the country's internet behind Ukraine or Belarus.[1] If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insa…

Mindlessly ambitious networks of people who care about themselves more than anything else exist in all countries. Google distribution of personality types within a population. They are weirdly similar across cultures.

Where resources are low and there is not enough to go around for the most ambitious and driven, there "punishment" for wasting each others time and resources is more extreme.

If Facebook or Google or Twitter, one day in the future is sophisticated enough to label the most "corrupt"/"corruptible" individuals in a population based on all their data how would you "punish" all of them if it is 30% the population?

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#59

Post by theelous3 »

chki wrote: post #16
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

Also, under Helmut Kohl, despite advice from experts to use fiber, the German government wired the whole country with copper instead because the ministry of infrastructure at the time had stocks in the copper business leaving the country's internet behind Ukraine or Belarus.[1] If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insa…

>If you're on the DAX or a politician, you're untouchable in Germany and lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insanely corrupt the German government and their corporate buddies are. This is obviously not true. There have been numerous uncovered political scandals in Germany that have led to politicians and managers loosing their job. Christian Wulff (Former German President), Guttenberg (f…

Losing your job just doesn't even register as an actual consequence when it comes to high level corruption though. Like maybe we should take their lollipops too? No TV before dinner?

Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard

#60

Post by swimik »

raxxorrax wrote: post #42
nxpnsv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself ignorant here, but compared to what? In CPI or similar measures typically only Nordic countries come out ahead of Germany...

It is entrenched in the (political) culture of Germany. As I said, metrics are difficult to compare, so determining the degree of corruption is always a poor approximation. Transparency International usually has some good data, but they are completely off when it comes to Germany. We have cases were public officials got bribes and weren't convicted or even didn't lose their position. Our former, former chancellor Koh…

You're claiming CPI is off as well as Transparency International. So what exactly are you basing your claim on that Germany has a "very high amount" of corruption? Just your personal impression? Seems very prone to be biased for many reasons.
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