Over half of households in Germany will be left living paycheck to paycheck or worse as a result of the country’s gas crisis, the head of a savings bank has warned.
The heightening prices come as major figures in Germany’s left-liberal coalition government are being called on to resign as the country edges ever closer to what is expected to be a chaotic winter — the result of years of chronic mismanagement by the German political class.
According to a report by Die Welt, Helmut Schleweis, who heads up the German savings bank Sparkasse, believes up to 60 per cent of households in the country will either use up their entire paycheque for basic services every month, or they will be forced into using their savings to support their subsistence.
This is compared to only 15 per cent of households being left in such a position a year ago.
“This part of the population is then simply no longer able to save,” the banking tsar is reported as saying.
Ultimately, Die Welt estimates that the figure would mean roughly 24 million households either treading water or financially drowning — a dire statistic, considering those in power already fear public revolts over their mishandling of a multitude of crises.
The most pressing of these issues is no doubt the ongoing gas crisis, with the political establishment — largely under former Christian Democratic Union leader Angela Merkel — focusing on achieving green agenda-driven climate goals at the expense of energy security, and allowing the country to become ever more reliant on Russian energy.
Authorities in the country outright ignored warnings from the likes of then-President Donald Trump that this move was a very bad idea, with German officials even laughing at the President when he warned that their country needed to immediately reverse course to avoid disaster.
Now, with those much relied upon energy exports having substantially dried up as a result of the war in Ukraine, Germany been left unable to fill the Russia-shaped hole in its energy economy — a problem that is already having dire effects on the nation’s economy, and could leave many unable to heat their homes over the winter due to it either being financially too expensive to do so or because the gas is simply not available.
With various political bigwigs expecting that such an eventuality would result in riots and other forms of public insurrection, those in power are now scrambling to slap a band-aid on the issue, with the country’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, travelling all the way to Canada this week to beg for help from fellow leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
However, these attempts to rectify the problem have not been enough for many in the country, with many now demanding the political heads of those in office to roll as a result of the chaos.
This includes a wealth of politicians from across the political spectrum in the Schneeberg region, with Der Spiegel reporting that politicians from the far-left, populist right, and major centre parties have all signed a joint letter demanding that Germany’s climate alarmist federal economy and climate minister, Robert Habeck, resign.
Such a letter is particularly significant in Germany as it violates the so-called “firewall” put in place against the country’s populist right, with both the far-left and so-called centre in Germany informally vowing never to cooperate with those in the populist Alternative für Deutschland or with any other party deemed insufficiently woke.
Such a breach in the firewall, despite coming from a relatively small region, will no doubt be enough to set off alarm bells in the minds of Germany’s government, who have openly expressed fears that a right-wing populist surge might be on the cards should gas shortages end up severely impacting the public over the winter.
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