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Armin Laschet is an affable journalist from Aachen, Germany. He is premier in North Rhine Westphalia in a coalition with the FDP. He is seen as a likable person who can win over others. Support from the Greens or the FDP in a future coalition is seen as one way to form a government. He was part of the Pizza Connection, a group of Christian Democrats and Greens who met in the wine cellar of an Italian restaurant in Bonn, to pull together people in areas that they agree. He has the dual qualities of being on Merkel's side in the crises she faced and also having a nuanced approach to tough issues to bring together different people.

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The Greens party will not be represented in the Saarland parliament as its performance declined in last weeks election. The Greens Party polls less than 8 percent in Germany, and less than 6 percent in North Rhine Westphalia elections for May 2017. The improving prospects of Martin Schulz the SPD candidate for chancellor have hurt the Greens. Even as the climate change issue becomes prominent the Greens are seeing the focus shift to the SPD and the CDU in 2017. The issues after the election of Trump following Brexit vote have shifted attention to what happens to the European Union, and the need for strong leadership in Germany and for the European Union. This does not help the Greens Party or other smaller parties. The AfD also has suffered as Germans take a second look at the parties, and think long and hard about what kind of future they want to see and the best way forward. 

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The recent history of two companies making kitchen cooking tools one in Germany and one in Italy also tell the story of the economies of the two countries since the start of the euro currency. Italy's economy has grown by 7%, Germany's by 31%. The Piedmont region's household income fell by 5% to 21,000 euros while the North Rhine Westphalia region's income was up by 18% to 26,000 euros since 2007. These are the two regions where Bialeti and Zwilling are located. A major issue with the euro is that countries like Italy or Spain could not devalue their currencies to become more competitive. Russia for example has used a devalued currency to become more competitive and return to economic growth. Zwilling sales have tripled to 700 million euros while Bialetti's sales have fallen 20% from a similar starting point of 200 million euros. Bialetti even had to give an equity stake to a New York hedge fund in a debt restructuring deal.

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Arminia Bielefield is one of Germany's well known soccer teams today. One cannot say it is a unknown town. I took a picture of the stadium and the passionate soccer fans on a major television station on German television just yesterday. It is in North Rhine Westphalia, and like other German teams in the Bundesliga has a whole soccer fan culture behind its stadium, the city and its surrounding areas, that one can only find in Germany. Entire families different generations grow up attending and cheering for their team.

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A recent poll by Forsa, independent polling institute, shows the governing parties in German chancellor Merkel's coalition have only 34% support. Forsa does surveys for German magazine Stern. By contrast the Social Democrats and the Greens have 47% support. Merkel lost an election in May 2010 in North Rhine-Westphalia. Merkel has three years remaining in her term.

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The Pirate Party was founded in Sweden by software enrepreneur Rick Falkvinge in 2006, with the idea of changing copyright and patent law and protecting online privacy. The Pirate Party has gained support in Germany. It won 10% of the vote in recent Berlin elections and is expected to do the same in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in April 2012.

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The Pirate Party, a party of digital activists favoring more transparency and sharing of information online has about 10% of voter support according to recent polls. The Pirate party concept started first in Sweden, but it is in Germany where it has gained political support. This party was founded in 2006 in an underground Berlin nightspot C-Base, where many digital activists gathered. In Sept. 2011, the German Pirate Party gained 9% of the vote, 15 of 249 seats in the Berlin state elections. This was repeated in the Saarland state elections, and now is likely to happen in elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia. These votes are coming at the expense of the Free Democrats and the Greens. The Free Democrats are hurt badly, and may not make the 5% of votes needed to win seats in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Greens are seen as part of the establishment, giving the Pirate party support from people thinking outside of the establishment. The polls show the Christian Democrats having voter support of 35%, Social Democrats 27%, Left 7%, Greens 14%, Free Democrats 3%....

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The campaign in German schools "Smart ohne phone" or "Smart without a phone"  for school children in 2025. One student at Dalton High School in Alsdorf, North Rhine Westphalia, Klara Ptak, is cited in this report by  Oliver Pieper in DW.com. Klara 17 years old says- "A total of 51 phones were seized — that's a fairly significant number considering we have 700 students. And you can really see a difference, especially in the younger kids. They used to stand around in a circle staring at their screens, and now they are playing football, badminton, or board games together. It's a dramatic shift." A survey by the Körber Foundation, and pollster Forsa, says that parents of children ages 12 to 18 complain that their children's time spent on social media is out of control and is their leading source of stress. The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina is for banning phones upto tenth grade, it wants to keep children under 13 away from the internet for social media completely. It is interesting to note that the younger student are fine with it and adapted quickly seeing the benefits. This shows that a new generation of student can be trained for a different lifestyle. Today in the Washington Post Linda McMahon and RFK Jr. team up on an article saying just this that time spent on screens lifestyles along with nutrition and food fail school children badly, reminding people about the saying in Latin since the 2nd Century by poet Juvenal -"a healthy mind in a healthy body." ( Latin -"mens sana in corpore sano").   ...

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Peer Steinbruck is nominated as the SPD's candidate for chancellor and seen as the strongest candidate to lead Germany. He will contest the elections against Angela Merkel. Steinbruck is a candidate who is direct and speaks his mind, and is likely to challenge Merkel's policies for the eurozone more directly before the elections in 2013. He is keen on winning the election outright and forming a coalition with the Greens party. The Greens and the SPD are working together in a coalition in North Rhine Westphalia, after winning the election in Germany's largest state. During that election the CDU leader in the state had contested the election based on his austerity policies. Steinbruck has the support of former SPD chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schroeder. Merkel is personally popular in Germany but her CDU party has lost elections in key states and its partner the Free Democrats have fared poorly.

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Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party suffered a major defeat in North Rhine-Westphalia. Exit polls show the SPD Social Democrats party winning 38.9% of the vote, increasing its vote by 4.4%. The CDU won only 26.3% of the vote, dropping 8.3% from the last election. The SPD state premier, Hannelore Kraft, proved to be a popular campaigner. Her opponent Mr Rottgen made debt-financed spending an issue and told voters this was a referendum on Merkel's policies for Europe. Ms. Kraft said after the win: "We made people the central focus again." This has overtones of the victory of Francois Hollande in France, a few days ago, and shows a fundamental shift in Europe. German media described it as debacle for the conservatives considering the size of the margin between SPD and CDU. The Greens secured 11.6% of the votes and this will enable Ms. Kraft to govern easily compared to an earlier minority government she led. This state is the largest in Germany, with one of every five Germans living here, with the capital in Dusseldorf. The Pirates party secured 7.8% of the vote, and the Free Democrats staging a recovery with 8.3% of the vote under a popular young leader Christian Lindner. Upto this point the SPD lacked an effective leader to challenge Merkel. The sense now is that Ms. Kraft will emerge as the SPD's challenger to Merkel in elections in 2013, or earlier. French president Hollande goes to Berlin on May 16, 2012, and the SPD win is expected to strengthen his position in negotiations....

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Greek unemployment is up to 11% and this does not reflect the women who are not registering as unemployed. About 100,000 public sector workers will be let go by 2013 as the austeity plan takes effect. The three year reform programme from the IMF, the European Commission and the ECB tries to cut the budget deficit from 13.6% to 2.7% of GDP in a quick three years even as the econmy is shrinking. The criticism of Germany is relatively less, but there is strong resentment in Greece for the IMF program with 60% of Greeks opposing it. And in Germany Merkel faces voter resentment of having to pay for other EU member countries mistakes in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia, where her CDU and FDP coalition faces a tough challenge. Intenationally Merkel is facing tough criticism for waffling as the euro currency faced a serious threat. The whole European Union plan was being put to the test resulting in the size of the bailout growing from $60 billon to $160 billion in a few weeks, many experts calling it ineptitude....

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Ms. Annegret Kramp-Krarrenbauer, elected leader of the CDU party in 2018 with the support of Angela Merkel, will not run for chancellor in next years election and will resign from her position by the end of the year. She will continue as Germany's defense minister. After losses for the CDU in recent elections and the embarrassment of local CDU leaders in Thuringia supporting the far right AfD, AKK as she is known decided to step down. Angela Merkel has decided not to run for chancellor again. Germany is set to chair the EU in the second half of 2020, and Merkel is no longer seen as a leader of influence. The Nationalist Alternative for Germany AfD has gained votes in recent elections following the 2015-2016 migrant crisis, with large numbers of refugees from North Africa and Arab world landing in Greece and Turkey and walking to Hungary, Austria and Germany. Merkel's handling of the crisis with acceptance of a million refugees in 2015-2016 unsettled European and German politics. Why? One way of looking at it is that in the same way that the U.S. took in Chinese imported goods ending in the Trump tariffs war, at some point it just becomes too big to handle. That ended up at $1 billion a day in imports from China when president Trump called it off and accused Obama Democrats, Bush Republicans, of betraying the country. Putting it into perspective Germany with one fourth of the population of the U.S. took in about twice the number of refugees in just one year 2015-2016 that the U.S. took in 10 years 2005-2015. The U.S. took in 675,000 immigrants between 2005-2015. This is as if the U.S. took in something like 20 million immigrants in a short period of 1 year on an equivalent basis- though the cultural impact is even greater in a nation like Germany that is like Japan an historically immigrant averse nation. All this happened too quickly for Germany to handle for its fragile cultural fabric. Much of the initial outpouring of support and positive sentiment came from the sense of having gone through World War II and the refugees in that and the early post war period, the need to return in the same spirit support Germany had received. Over time it eroded support for the Christian Democratic Union and Merkel. That Merkel could have done this is itself a small miracle. Now the rebuilding has to begin. Adenauer's CDU and the socialist SPD party of Willy Brandt now have less than 50% support, only with the Greens Party do they make up 50%. The question now is can the CDU, and the SPD which has fallen to 14% in elections, make it back and what kind of future makeup political parties will have in Germany, how the social fabric can be restored. AKK's achievement is to mend relations between the liberal Merkel wing of the CDU and conservatives from Bavaria (CSU) over immigration.  Candidates for CDU leadership are Armin Laschet, Jens Spahn, and Friedrich Merz. Laschet premier of North Rhine-Westphalia has Merkel's support. Looking back too much attention was taken up by the euro crisis, and too little was done in the areas of infrastructure, inequality gaps, education, child care, under Merkel's leadership and of the preceding SPD years, much like what happened under Bush and Obama administrations in the U.S. where wars, economic crises led to neglect on issues that affect lives of ordinary working families. ...

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Private equity firm 3G Capital Partners of Brazil innovates its way in cost reduction with the use of 'zero based budgeting' tool to have managers justify budgets each year from scratch. The firm hopes to use these skills in bringing down costs in the merged Heinz-Kraft Foods company. Shifting consumer preferences from packaged foods to fresher foods are pressuring sales and margins in the packaged foods industry, creating the need for new ways to run these companies to improve financial performance.