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The personalization (greed) or playing off the state against the economy conceals the more complex background of the financial market crisis

The complexities of the "structured products" invented by financial mathematicians in the financial industry, which were too complex for the layman (investor) at least, disguised the lucrative trade in bad mortgage loans, which had been going on for years, as a simple chain letter construction. Today’s explanations for the now acute financial market or even world economic crisis seem to conceal a more complex social ie in their simplicity, in a strangely counter-current complementarity.

It is hardly satisfactory that the crisis is often reduced (by the mass media) to the culpable actions of a few individuals. It is a labeling fraud to brand the actions of investment bankers and brokers (and correspondingly investors, as is to be remembered) now in the crisis as "greedy" and "irresponsible", even from a prasidial address as immoral. In other words, what was previously business as usual – profit maximization, cost minimization and the pursuit of profit – has been successfully implemented. It is a personalization of the events, which can also be understood as a helpless effort of the mass media to bring complex ies closer to the audience.

According to the ARD-Deutschlandtrend four Funftel of the Germans find the Nato important, the German soldiers should be withdrawn however from Afghanistan

Before, Bush was the bad man from the USA, now Obama is the good man for the Germans. People expect the president of the USA, which is now ailing but still acts as a superpower, to regulate the fate of the world – for better or for worse. The anti-Americanism of recent years, which some have noted, was merely a rejection of the Bush administration, while expectations of the U.S. remained high. Barack Obama still shines in Germany, according to the latest ARD Deutschlandtrend. 80 percent of respondents like what he has done so far.

The Germans were obviously happy to have an Obama at the head of state instead of Merkel, Steinmeier and Co. also an Obama at the head of state. 76 percent would like to see politicians like Obama, and 72 percent say they have been pleasantly surprised by him since he took office. He seems to be doing everything right. 89 percent think. Under his leadership, the USA is back on the right track. The euphoria is just the all-or-nothing flip side of Bush’s earlier opposition. Now 78 percent of Germans again see the USA as a trustworthy partner. However, here stand the French – despite or because of Sarkozy? – still on top with 87 percent.

Stefan Ruzowitzky’s "The false ones" does without salon Nazis, but here too, Jews are better at trickery and deception

Stefan Ruzowitzky’s "The Wrong" is not the first concentration camp film. But one of the most unusual. For he shows the exception to the rule: prisoners who were well-fed and hygienically housed, whose survival the Nazis strove to prevent. For the titular "False" were experts in the field of money and document forgery. The Nazi regime formed a special unit out of them, whose main purpose was the production of false foreign currency for the war effort. The dilemma: After successful falsification, they face certain death – if only for reasons of secrecy. The film, which is conventional in its way of making, asks more good questions about history and cinema than it finds the right answers, an interesting film worth seeing, with considerable shortcomings.

Not everything is successful in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s film, but before any criticism, it must be said that "The counterfeiters" is one of the most exciting and interesting of the feature films that have been made in recent years to tell the stories of the National Socialist era. No less than in "The Downfall" or "Sophie Scholl" Here, actual events are faithfully recounted, but in contrast to the last days in the Fuhrerbunker and Gestapo cellar, the protagonists are not world-famous.

After the neoliberal summer, Ireland has plunged into debt winter – every Irishman is half a million dollars in foreign debt

Ireland bows to massive prere from the EU and is now toying with the idea of slipping under the euro bailout umbrella against its own will. Without the irresponsible talkativeness of the chancellor it would never have come so far.

Image: O’Dea, CC License