At Rosenthaler Platz, Berlin.
Tag Archives: Berlin
Will 'crazy' tax leave Berlin unable to compete?
20 May
Updated: What makes a city competitive for startups? VCs, angels and cheap desk space, to be sure, but also nuts-and-bolts stuff like transport and taxation.
As Om noted in December, Berlin's airports are quite small, but the city had a plan. The two currently operational airports -- Tegel and Schoenefeld -- were supposed to be replaced in June by a new mega-airport, Berlin Brandenburg.
Bankrupt Berlin Amusement Park
8 Apr
Kulturpark Plänterwald was a popular entertainment park in socialist East Germany. The funfair opened in 1969, next to the river Spree, and covered an area of 29.5 hectares. After the reunification of Germany, contracts changed and Norbert Witte, under Spreepark GmbH, operated the park. During his leadership, the park was gradually altered to a more western oriented recreational park, and to finance this face-lift he accumulated large debts. Thus, they had to raise the entrance fee, but at the same time the number of parking lots dropped, and visitors were, hence, increasingly reluctant to visit the facilities. The number of visitors dropped sharply, from 1.5 million to 400 000 per annum in 2001.
In january 2002, Witte and his family announced that they intended to move to Peru to run another entertainment site. Both parks failed. The Spreepark GmbH was declared completely insolvent in August 2002 and as a consequence had to close down. Witte was in Berlin, May 2004, sentenced to 7 years in jail for trying to smuggle 167 kilograms of cocaine, with a market value of 14 million USD, in the 12 meter steel masts of a flying carpet carousel. The customs cover was that the carpet ride needed repair in Germany and was therefore shipped from Peru. After four years, mostly in low-security, open facility prison, Norbert Witte was released. His less fortunate son, Marcel, got 20 years in Peruvian prison for the drug smuggling.
Tragic Age Of The Greeks
30 May
Berlin and the European Central Bank (ECB) are deeply divided over the best way to handle the Greek crisis. The dispute reached a new high last week: Should they pursue a soft debt restructuring or give billions of euros in loans for years to come? Influential Germans fear the threat of austerity measures could be greater than a «haircut» of Greek debt.
Read The Rest Of The Story On Spiegel Online, And Don’t Miss John Mauldin’s Business Insider Article: Here What’s Going To Happen When Greece Defaults.
Source: Barron’s How to Fix Greece. HT: The Big Picture.
How Capitalism Saved The Miners
15 Oct
Freedom for the miners via Flickr
The Wall Street Journal informs us that free-market-capitalism saved the miners in Chile. How? The drilling process and the detailed information on their situation was provided by innovative components from Germany, South Korea and Japan – to mention some of the nations involved.
“It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism. If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men? Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit, from a private company in Berlin, Pa. that has 74 employees.
Most of the time, no one notices how capitalism works. All it does is create jobs, wealth and well-being. But without this system running in the background, without the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead.”
Full article here.
WSJ Markets
- Trump Sells Himself Outside the U.S.Donald Trump hasn't licensed his name for a U.S. real-estate project since before the financial downturn. But he has done so for more than a dozen real-estate developments outside the U.S.
- Traders Try to Game Oil-Price BenchmarkSome oil traders say they try to skew Platts oil-price benchmarks by offering to do small deals at a loss, with the goal of doing bigger ones at better prices.
- For Some Investors Emerging Markets Still Provide a LureSome investors are betting recent losses for emerging-market stocks, currencies and bonds will prove to be a temporary setback.
- Stocks Keep on TruckingStocks pushed to the highest levels in nearly three weeks as investors await news on whether the Federal Reserve will pull back on its stimulus measures.
Recent Comments