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The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

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Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#3
The German anti-English sentiment is sometimes right. They're not afraid to point out omnipresent Anglosphere oligopolies - in payments (Visa, Mastercard), in social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), in surveillance (Google, Facebook), in mobile (Google, Apple). While the rest of the Europe entirely submits to these oligopolies on a promise of receiving "investment". Funny though how Germans turn blind eye on their own oligopolies dominating and devastating European markets.

Part of the problem is that German economy is ruled by industrial and media moguls. For them internet is whether "stupid websites", a medium serving copyrights violations, or legal compliance issue (see "Impressum" hysteria). Either way an issue rather than opportunity. With their geriatric population the strategy is basically - increase public media fee, 50mbit copper internet in every household, internet for broadcasting public media content while throttling any alternatives.

Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#4
Germany has their share of scandals.. Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, Sparkasse, other banks.. Wirecard.. but politicians of course had no idea.. afterwards they are all shocked and surprised.. sigh.

Especially Wirecard.. is such a failure on so many levels. Lead me to the conclusion: 90% of people half ass everything. It's like "The Wire" all the way. I bet you even Google, Apple and Facebook half ass stuff.. it's just a facade of elitism at those places.. Places like EY. Being a consultant, I've worked at several such places.. it's 100% true. (but to be fair they also had their share of brillant people)

So many people are pretending their way throughout their whole careers. While basically being incompetent.. or not giving a damn.. sigh.

Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#5

The German anti-English sentiment is sometimes right. They're not afraid to point out omnipresent Anglosphere oligopolies - in payments (Visa, Mastercard), in social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), in surveillance (Google, Facebook), in mobile (Google, Apple). While the rest of the Europe entirely submits to these oligopolies on a promise of receiving "investment". Funny though how Germans turn blind eye on their own…

I have the feeling that separation of powers tends to be stronger in the US. But maybe it's false..

Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#6

The German anti-English sentiment is sometimes right. They're not afraid to point out omnipresent Anglosphere oligopolies - in payments (Visa, Mastercard), in social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), in surveillance (Google, Facebook), in mobile (Google, Apple). While the rest of the Europe entirely submits to these oligopolies on a promise of receiving "investment". Funny though how Germans turn blind eye on their own…

> Funny though how Germans turn blind eye on their own oligopolies dominating and devastating European markets.

Everybody wants sellers to compete when they're buying, nobody wants to compete when they're selling.

> For them internet is whether "stupid websites", a medium serving copyrights violations, or legal compliance issue (see "Impressum" hysteria).

The large corporations and media companies had issues with the laws around imprints? That wasn't my perception at all. Rather, it was average people who wrote blogs etc who didn't want to put their real name, home address and tax IDs onto their sites for various reasons, but the law was so vague that nobody was sure their site wasn't "similar to the press" or "with commercial interest". Larger companies didn't care at all -- they were generally compliant way before that law was introduced.

Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#7

The German anti-English sentiment is sometimes right. They're not afraid to point out omnipresent Anglosphere oligopolies - in payments (Visa, Mastercard), in social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), in surveillance (Google, Facebook), in mobile (Google, Apple). While the rest of the Europe entirely submits to these oligopolies on a promise of receiving "investment". Funny though how Germans turn blind eye on their own…

I have the feeling that separation of powers tends to be stronger in the US. But maybe it's false..

I don't know if it's intentional separation of powers. The American culture is very individualistic, especially compared to the German. This just naturally means that American companies tend to "go it alone" in relation to the public sector for longer than they would in Germany.

Certainly when American companies get to the right size they seem to become much closer to the political bodies that matter to them and their interests, as is the case likely everywhere

Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#8

Germany has their share of scandals.. Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, Sparkasse, other banks.. Wirecard.. but politicians of course had no idea.. afterwards they are all shocked and surprised.. sigh. Especially Wirecard.. is such a failure on so many levels. Lead me to the conclusion: 90% of people half ass everything. It's like "The Wire" all the way. I bet you even Google, Apple and Facebook half ass stuff.. it's just a…

I had heard about the Wirecard scandal, but didn’t know the details. Having read the article now, I do wonder how Ernst & Young signed off on Wirecard’s accounts.

Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#9

Germany has their share of scandals.. Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, Sparkasse, other banks.. Wirecard.. but politicians of course had no idea.. afterwards they are all shocked and surprised.. sigh. Especially Wirecard.. is such a failure on so many levels. Lead me to the conclusion: 90% of people half ass everything. It's like "The Wire" all the way. I bet you even Google, Apple and Facebook half ass stuff.. it's just a…

Of course a lot of people half-ass stuff at FAANGs, they're only human (plus there's been enough scandals coming out of those places that it's no secret any more).

Re: The Origins of the Wirecard Scandal

#10
> When scandal happens, the country seems less interested in figuring out who exactly did what than in letting the old reflexes of collective guilt kick in.

Ha. True. What a great read. Thanks for sharing.

> A scandal like Wirecard is powered by the dream that you could have an Uber without slashing workers’ protection—that one could hold on to what remains of the German social market economy while at the same time going all-in on laissez-faire capitalism.

;_; let us dream and stop holding up a mirror in front of us.

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