Economists From Germany

"What troubles me is that we will see in Germany no approximation of the East German income to the West German income anymore, because productivity stays so far behind."

"In the basic questions, one have to be naive. And I think that the problems of the world and of humanity cannot be solved without idealism. However, I also believe that one should be realistic and pragmatic at the same time."

"It is true that the politician at the moment of his actions or if he explains his actions and justifies them cannot provide at the same time also great philosophy. But if he acts without philosophical and ethical foundations, he is in danger of making mistakes. He is in danger to sink into opportunism. He is even in danger of being a charlatan."

"The rule of law does not have to win, it does not have to lose, but it has to exist!"

"Intelligence services] are poor pigs suffering from two mental illnesses: The one disease is because they never get public recognition for what they actually do. This is inevitable, as they have to work in secret. This deformes the soul. The other disease bases on the fact that they have the tendency to believe they understood the national interests of their own country much better than their own government. This latter disease is the reason that I do not trust them."

"Nothing is more important than pastoral care for people in need. [...] For me, nothing is less important than theology."

"One is left, the other is right. But comparable populists are Lafontaine and Le Pen already."

"If you look closely, you'll see that the political journalists actually more belong to the political class and less to journalism."

"Of course, nuclear power has its risks. But there is no power and nothing in the world without risks, not even love."

"If we continue on for decades as before, then I have to be pessimistic about our country."

"“Anyone who votes for Die Grünen will be blaming themselves bitterly later on.” („Wer die Grünen wählt, der wird sich später mal bitterste Vorwürfe machen.“) — 1980, with regard to the formation of the political party Die Grünen"

"Immigration from foreign civilizations creates more problems than it can bring us in terms of positive factors on the labor market. Immigration from related civilizations, for example from Poland, is problem-free. From the Czech Republic, for example, is no problem. From Austria, for example, is no problem. From Italy is no problem. It starts with somewhat more eastern regions. Immigration from Anatolia, for example, is not entirely problem-free. Immigration from Afghanistan causes considerable problems. Immigration from Kazakhstan causes problems. These are other civilizations. Not because of their different genes, not because of their different ancestry, but because of the way they were brought up as infants, as toddlers, as schoolchildren, as children in the family."

"With a democratic society, the concept of multiculturalism is difficult to reconcile. Maybe in a very long term. But if you ask, where multicultural societies have so far worked, you can get very quickly to the conclusion that they only work there peacefully where there is a strong authoritarian state there. So, it was a mistake that we picked up at the beginning of the 60's guest workers from foreign cultures into the country. There is still no multicultural society [in the USA] either, but perhaps one day there will be. Singapore is a good example, but the cultures living there all speak English and the political system is based on authority."

"The more direct decisions by all the people, all the more ungovernable is the country!"

"Mihajlo Masarovic and Eduard Pestel (1974) attempted a radical innovation by developing complex models that combined demographic projections with economic, social, environmental, and political trends, with the objective of revealing that the population predicted by the UN would necessarily lead to an an explosion of the world system during the 21st century, causing an increase in mortality and a rapid population decline."

"Mesarovic and Pestel are critical of the Forrester-Meadows world view, which is that of a homogeneous system with a fully predetermined evolution in time once the initial conditions are specified"

"Eduard Pestel recalled that the Club of Rome’s founder, Aurelio Peccei, was tremendously impressed “by the fact that all computer runs exhibited—sooner or later at some point in time during the next century—a collapse mode regardless of any ‘technological fixes’ employed,” and that Peccei “obviously saw his fears confirmed.”"

"Our world model was built specifically to investigate five major trends of global concern – accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment. The model we have constructed is, like every model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished... Our conclusions are : (1.) If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity..."

"The value of global modelling has been severely restricted by poor appreciation of the constraints under which governments and politicians operate. Equally, the value of governments and politicians has been severely restricted by largely ignoring the very real but less immediate problems tackled by modellers."

"Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel have made a deliberate attempt to gain approbation from the skeptical segment of the intellectual community and to disassociate their work from that of Forrester and Meadows."

"Eduard Pestel is also known... for his blunt pleas to make global modelling relevant to decision makers."

"Pestel was a very forceful person and quickly saw the power of system dynamics."

"K. William Kapp's book "The Social Costs of Private Enterprise" was one of the first economic treatise that called attention to the ecological and social external costs of the market economy. His book is considered one of the origins of and a foundation for ecological economics."

"Capitalism must be regarded as an economy of unpaid costs, ‘unpaid’ in so far as a substantial portion of the actual costs of production remains unaccounted for in entrepreneurial outlays; instead they are shifted to, and ultimately borne by, third persons or by the community as a whole."

"To ignore social costs because they require an evaluation by society... and to leave social losses out of account because they are 'external' and 'non-economic' in character, would be equivalent to attributing no or ‘zero’ value to all social damages which is no less arbitrary and subjective a judgement than any positive or negative evaluation of social costs."

"Social costs... are all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities."

"They (social costs) are damages or diseconomies sustained by the economy in general, which under different institutional conditions could be avoided. [. . .] if these costs were inevitable under any kind of institutional arrangement they would not really present a special theoretical problem. [. . .] to reveal their origin, the study of social costs must always be an institutional analysis. Such an analysis raises inevitably the question of institutional reform and policy."

"Whenever social costs are shifted onto economically and politically weaker sections of society without compensation, a redistribution of the costs of production, hence real income is involved."

"Had there been a computer in 1872... it would probably have predicted that there would be so many horse-drawn vehicles that it would be impossible to clear up all the manure."

"The rejection of concern for practical goals expressed in the German Society for Sociology's founding charter represented the culmination of a debate in the Social Policy Association, the so-called Werturteilsstreit, in which a group of young political economists, including , Werner Sombart, and Max Weber, attacked the older generation of political economists for mixing facts and values, science and politics."

"Humanity without Nationality is empty, nationality without humanity is blind."

"Capitalism was born from the money loan. Money lending contains the root idea of capitalism. Turn to the pages of the Talmud and you will find that the Jews made an art of lending money. They were taught early to look for their chief happiness in the possession of money. They fathomed all the secrets that lay hid in money. They became Lords of Money and Lords of the World."

"The name of Rothschild means more than the firm. It means ALL JEWDOM SO FAR AS THE STOCK EXCHANGE is concerned; for only with the help of compatriots could the Rothschilds have reached their position of power — which dominates all others and obtain ENTIRE MASTERY OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE. In order to obtain command of the stock exchange and the money market all possible means were utilized. The Rothschilds practiced stock jobbing in the narrower sense which the French attach to the word. They employed the expedient of artificially influencing the market by creating a favorable atmosphere. The capitalist movement reached its highest point in the speculation banks. By means of loaning speculative securities, banks are placed in a position, by acquiring other securities at a cheap price, to create the impression that money is plentiful and is accompanied by a desire to buy. Thus power of creating an upward movement in prices is easily acquired — and this power can be reversed just as easily to depress prices by depreciating the store of available securities. The great banks, accordingly, hold the handle which controls the machine called the stock exchange. And the heads of the banks tend more and more TO BECOME ENTIRE MASTERS OF ECONOMIC LIFE."

"In the face of this fact, is there not some justification for the opinion that the United States owe their very existence to the Jews? And if this be so, how much more can it be asserted that Jewish influence made the United States just what they are—that is, American? For what we call Americanism is nothing else, if we may say so, than the Jewish spirit distilled."

"He seems unable to brook any criticism or challenging of his stories or statements. My comments from time to time, my obvious failure to be convinced of his complete innocence and lack of guile were irritating to him, and his voice reached heights of shrillness at times. As ever, his is still the pose of outraged innocence, and the honest banker indignant."

"Others might argue, as Rathenau and Stresemann had, that Germany must try to pay reparations, if only to prove the impossibility of doing so, or must borrow to the hilt in New York so as to drive a rift between the Western creditors; Hitler essentially argued for default. It helped, of course, that the reparations system had itself collapsed by 1932; Germany had already defaulted, albeit with American consent, by the time Hitler came to power. It helped, too, that the Nazis were able to recruit the widely respected former Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht, who had resigned his post in 1930 after effectively endorsing Hitler's campaign against the revised reparations schedule known as the Young Plan."

"The most dangerous and reprehensible type of all opportunists, someone who would use a Hitler for his own ends, and then claim, after Hitler was defeated, to have been against him all the time. He was part of a movement that he knew was wrong, but was in it just because he saw it was winning."

"I have never believed in war. It is a crime against humanity whether you win or lose. I just read an article in this magazine I have in my hands that one day the moon will fall on the earth, but it is my feeling that until then, we should try to make the world a better place to live in."

"I was never in the army - I never had a uniform - I was never a soldier. I detest uniforms because they make one unfree. There is an old quotation that goes something like this: 'Your mind will be trained well, but confined to Spanish boots.' That quotation is very apt. It signifies how narrow the military mind becomes."

"Schacht is a disappointment because of another thing. If I would have had the terrible secrets of crimes committed by the Nazis in my hands, which Schacht said he possessed, then I would not have participated for ten years in a conspiracy. And I wouldn't participate in an Attentat solely in 1944, which incidentally was to be committed not by Schacht but by others - a cowardly Attentat at that, which meant placing a bomb under Hitler's table and then running off. If Schacht felt as nauseated by the Nazis as he now claims, he would have had to draw a pistol himself and shoot the man responsible for these dastardly actions, I mean Hitler himself. Anything else is unthinkable, with the knowledge that Schacht had."

"It was Schacht, the facade of starched respectability, who in the early days provided the window dressing, the bait for the hesitant, and whose wizardry later made it possible for Hitler to finance the colossal rearmament program and to do it secretly."

"Colonies are necessary to Germany. We shall get them through negotiation if possible; but if not, we shall take them."

"The memory of war weighs undiminished upon the people's minds. That is because deeper than material wounds, moral wounds are smarting, inflicted by the so-called peace treaties. … Material loss can be made up through renewed labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples, in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the people's conscience. … The Versailles Dictate cannot be an eternal document, because not only its economic, but also its spiritual and moral premises are wrong."

"One thing I fear, that you Americans will do the same thing that you did after the last war. I mean that you will pull out of here and leave Europe, then Russia will have her way. Private enterprise and individual rights will be lost just as much as under a Nazi government. Frightful!"

"The Jews must realize that their influence in Germany has disappeared for all time. We wish to keep our people and our culture pure and distinctive, just as the Jews have always demanded this of themselves."

"My so-called foreign friends do neither me nor the situation nor themselves any good when they try to bring me into opposition to the allegedly impossible National Socialist economic theories and declare me to some extent the protector of economic reason. I can assure you that everything I say and do has the complete approval of the Fuhrer and that I would not say or do anything that does not have his approval."

"It has been shown that, in contrast to everything which classical national economy has hitherto taught, not the producer but the consumer is the ruling factor in economic life."

"There was only the choice between Communism and Hitler, and I will tell you why Hitler won. People will not give up religion, rights, freedom of personality, the opportunity to develop by individual effort - which includes private property. And the other reason for Hitler's winning is that if a whole people is treated as the Germans were, everyone will say, 'Are we worse people than others? Are we of a minor race?' Just as every single individual needs and must have self-respect, just as every family is proud of decent traditions, so every nation wants to maintain her individual manner, culture, language, and customs. It was in these respects that Communism failed. The Communists said that God was nonsense and stupidity and preached internationalism without maintaining the natural national feelings of a nation."

"But Schacht was infinitely more reasonable than the Nazis. He was fundamentally a dynamic, changeable person. In the beginning, therefore, it was quite logical that he should be attracted by the dynamic, dramatic, short-term ideas of the Nazis. As I said, Schacht has intelligence, but is not particularly a man of principle, although I think he believes he is. But it is reasonable to assume that later on he differed with the Nazis. He was too intelligent to go along to the extremes, which they pursued in their folly."

"If you follow a certain road for some time, it takes an enormous willpower to leave, although you might recognize that the road was not good. But in my case I believed and was convinced that I was serving and helping the people until the last. However, it is a terrible fate that has befallen me. If I had remained with my writing and my music I would be working now and not a criminal in the Nuremburg prison."