Bundesbank's boss speaks out but then apologize (as usual...)

[Tony]

Former Finance Minister Slams Berlin's 'Underclass'

Berlin's former Finance Minister Thilo Sarrazin has blasted the German capital for what he regards as too big an "underclass," too many unproductive immigrants and a leftist mentality. His employer, the Bundesbank, has been quick to distance itself from his remarks.

Berlin likes to think of itself as a hip and multicultural sort of place -- full of artists, writers and DJs living on a shoestring while pursuing the creative life. Mayor Klaus Wowereit has even turned the vice of its relative penury and high unemployment into a virtue, famously describing the city as "poor, but sexy." However, the city's former finance minister, Thilo Sarrazin, has now tried to punch holes in that image, slamming the city's large immigrant population for not being productive enough and blaming Berlin's leftist mentality for holding the German capital back.


Sarrazin's provocative interview with Berlin-based culture magazine Lettre International has provoked his current employers, the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, to take the unusual step of distancing itself from him.

The former finance minister, who is now a member of the Bundesbank board and works in Frankfurt, had little good to say about his former home. In the interview, he argued that Berlin would "never be saved by the Berliners." Citing the high jobless rate in the city, he said part of the problem lay in the fact that "40 percent of births were in the underclass," which was causing the standards in schools to decrease instead of increase.

'The Rest Should Go Elsewhere'

"In Berlin there is a bigger problem than elsewhere of an underclass that...continues here (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,652582,00.html)


http://www.tip-berlin.de/files/mediafiles/295/Sarrazin2_by_Uhlemann_Kurier.jpg

Bundesbank’s Sarrazin Apologizes for Remarks About Berlin

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin has apologized for his disparaging remarks about the German capital Berlin.

“I realize that not all the wording in the interview with Lettre International was well chosen,” Sarrazin said in a personal statement published by the Bundesbank today. He added that his comments were entirely personal and that he did not speak on behalf of the Bundesbank.

In the Lettre International interview Sarrazin said Berlin has too many “underclass” children, too few intellectuals and many Arabs and Turks who contribute little to the local economy.

“I didn’t mean to discriminate against any ethnic groups,” Sarrazin said. Should the remarks have been understood to be discriminatory, “I sincerely regret that and apologize.” he added.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aA85tvRWA4XY

[Tony]

October 20, 2009 5:30 AM
by Paul Belien
Adjunct Fellow, Hudson Institute

Germany: Death to Free Speech - Civil Courage vs. Uncomfortable Facts

Thilo Sarrazin, a Bundesbank director who criticized Turkish and Arab immigrants in a recent interview, has been punished by his employer and may lose his job. Apart from receiving threats by Islamist extremists, he may also be taken to court by the German authorities on charges of “incitement to racial hatred.” For many Germans, however, Mr. Sarrazin, who until last May was Finance Minister in the regional government of the state of Berlin for the Social-Democrat SPD, is a hero.



Last week Axel Weber, the president of the Bundesbank, Germany’s equivalent of the FED, needed body guards on an official visit to Istanbul. Normally, the head of the German central bank never travels with body guards, but life at the Bundesbank has changed since two weeks ago. Lettre International, a German cultural magazine based in Berlin, published an interview with Thilo Sarrazin, in which the Bundesbank director criticized the unwillingness of Turkish and Arab immigrants to assimilate into German society. The interview provoked the anger of these very immigrants. Immigrant groups accuse Mr. Sarrazin of espousing the “racist views of the far right.”



His boss, Mr. Weber, however, does not want to become the target of angry Muslims. He has apologized to everyone who might feel offended by the “discriminatory comments” of the Bundesbank official. In fact, the Bundesbank issued a statement, distancing itself in the strongest terms from the interview. It also demoted Sarrazin; he may even be fired altogether.

In the Lettre International interview, Sarrazin talked about the economic and cultural situation in his hometown of Berlin. He argued that Berlin has been unable to recover the cultural and economic status and prestige it had before the Second World War. Even its contemporary population figure of 3.2 million is lower than the pre-war 4 million. Sarrazin says that Berlin’s dynamics were broken when the city lost its Jews: the Jewish elite were driven out and instead the city acquired a Turkish and Arab underclass.



“The large scale disappearance of the Jews could never be compensated,” Sarrazin said. “Thirty percent of physicians and lawyers, eighty percent of all theatre directors in Berlin in 1933 were of Jewish origin. Commerce and banking were also largely Jewish. All this has vanished; it was also a considerable intellectual loss. Sixty to seventy percent of the extermination and expulsion of the Jews in the German speaking countries affected Berlin and Vienna.”

continues herehttp://www.hudsonny.org/2009/10/germany-death-to-free-speech---civil-courage-vs-uncomfortable-facts.php