21

May

Numerus clausus

Restricted admission.

With free tuition, German universities don’t use money to determine who gets an education and who doesn’t. But they’re having a bit of a budget crunch so, if they don’t get more money from the government, the universities threatened to restrict admissions of new students for majors that don’t yet have restricted admission.

Medicine and law are two famous numerus clausus departments, with admissions depending on how many doctors and lawyers the government calculates Germany will need in x years.

An informal way German universities do restrict admission is by requiring students to pass certain highly-set hurdles in order to graduate (though you can put off graduation for a very long time while still taking classes and haunting libraries). Humanities subjects frequently require a Latin proficiency certificate. Other subjects use statistics classes for the purpose. Medical students’ ranks used to be further thinned by a notorious class in physics.

Even with free tuition, money still limits who can study and who cannot. The semesters are set up with long breaks so students can work enough to earn money for the next semester. Student rebates are provided to try to help with the costs of living and the costs of not working. The rebates I remember applied for foreign students and included low rent on well-designed student housing, cheaper mandatory health insurance (incl. dental and medicines), reduced or free public transportation (trains, buses, subways), cheaper admission to museums, movies, concerts, lakes and swimming pools…

10 years ago Short URL Comments

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13

Sep

Primum non nocere

“First, do no harm.” If you have no access to good things, then strive for the absence of bad ones. A logical short-term choice but no permanent way to live. Good things have to be too. If they’re not present eventually you’ll have to make them, somehow.

In cultures that brew bad beer or e.g. confuse sediment and microbial contamination with personality you might be able to get by for a while by drinking beer that’s as watery as possible. But that’s no way to live. You can’t not talk about religion and politics forever, especially when people are taking advantage of the vacuum to make culture war. Another example: women readers probably can’t enjoy science fiction from fun thinkers such as Robert Heinlein unless it’s a work with no female characters, just humans and aliens. But as tempting as a modern moratorium on female characters sounds, it would create more generations of… uninformed writing about women.

Fortunately, the world’s goodnesses are multiplied by good discussions. Useful ideas shared are solutions doubled and time/effort halved. As we get older the problems we haven’t solved yet seem impossible, and yet one entertaining lunch with a curious friend can save you five years of frustration.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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22

Jul

Damnatio memoriae

Attempt to erase public memory of a politically out-of-favor person by rewriting official history.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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23

Jun

Quadriga

Latin word for four horses yoked to a chariot, such as the stone statues above Brandenburg Gate that got to watch festivities for the Berlin-Besuch, President Obama’s visit to Berlin this week.

(KVOD ree ga.)

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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28

May

Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundam cognoscas rationem

“Please insert your ATM card and enter your PIN,” as it appears in Vatican City. From the book Found in Translation by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche.

There have been concerns about the Vatican Bank (the “Institute for Works of Religion,” IOR) and money laundering, to the extent that the European Central Bank even blocked Vatican Bank ATM and credit card terminals at one point, practically excluding Vatican City from the EU. In response to pressure from the Roman district attorney’s office, the Bank of Italy, Italy’s central bank, froze electronic transfers with EU banks for the IOR, which initially instead of cooperating tried to find a new banking partner in Switzerland. Now, the Vatican’s government has created a financial oversight authority which presented its first report on 22 May 2013, the first time in history such a thing has happened. The head of the authority announced that six suspicious cases had been reported to them. After investigating, they forwarded two of these cases to Vatican district attornies.

Update on 02 Oct 2013: A group of cardinals is meeting in Rome to discuss Vatican reforms that include issues at the Vatican bank. The I.O.R. published its financial data for the first time on 01 Oct 2013.

An 07 Oct 2013 Spiegel.de article said in Summer 2013 the Vatican Bank had ~1000 accounts held by people not actually eligible to have a Vatican bank account, containing ~300 million euros.

Update on 04 Dec 2013: Former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glindon is chairing a “papal committee” that will submit reform suggestions, but Pope Franziskus has already tasked his personal secretary Alfred Xuereb with overseeing the following reforms, said Spiegel.de:

  • “Thousands of accounts were closed. Only people in the global Catholic association [globaler Katholikenverbund] will be allowed to be I.O.R. customers in future.
  • “No more anonymous numbered accounts, long a house specialty.
  • “The bank will issue no loans, or if it does they will only be in a few ‘extraordinary cases.’
  • “Speculative or risky investments have been forbidden for customers’ money.

“These reforms have been described in detail in a manual for employees, as well as how to handle cash transactions; the I.O.R. averaged about triple the percentage of cash transactions as worldly banks.”

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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29

Apr

Cum-Ex-Geschäfte

“Cum/ex transactions.” A lucrative tax loophole that major German banks have been using. Spiegel reported the story on 28 Apr 2013, saying it had been broken by the Berlin Sunday version of Die Welt (Die Welt am Sonntag, WamS) but so far search results for it online are only turning up in Der Spiegel. The loophole, estimated to have cost the German government 12 billion euros so far, was created by corporate tax reform legislation of the SPD + Green Party coalition in 2002. Though discovered by officials shortly thereafter in 2002, and reported all the way up the chain of command, the loophole was not fixed by Hans Eichel (SPD) or his successor Peer Steinbrück (SPD, currently running against Angela Merkel for chancellor of Germany). Amendments to the law in 2007 made the situation worse, Spiegel reports that WamS reports. Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) appears to have waited several years to fix the problem as well, though now the order appears to have gone out.

The problem was this: under certain circumstances capital gains tax could be reimbursed multiple times. After e.g. stocks or bonds were sold short but before they were bought back to conclude the transaction, German bureaucracy sometimes obscured to whom the stocks or bonds belonged: the person loaning the stock, the short seller or the end customer. The question would be trivial, say financial reporters, were it not for the fact that sometimes if the sale occurred right before a dividend the German IRS would erroneously issue more than one get-your-tax-back certificate for capital gains on the stock. Honest people would ignore the unearned get-your-tax-back certificate, but others would deliberately game the system to get the treasury to reimburse them these taxes even conceivably more than five times, said professor Heribert Anzinger of the University of Ulm.

This looks like the dividend stripping loophole HypoVereinsBank and others were reported in 2012 to have used to extract money from the German fiscus. Etymologically, Wikipedia contributors explain, when a company’s general assembly of shareholders decides to issue a dividend, the dividend is usually issued the day after the assembly meeting, called the “ex day” (“Ex-Dividende”). The day before the ex day is called the cum day, for arcane reasons.

(COOM   ECKS   geh SHEFF teh.)

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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14

Feb

Brückenbauer

“Bridge builder,” what the Latin word “pontifex” means.

(BRICK en bow er.)

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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05

Dec

Steuerabkommen

“Tax agreement.” Germany’s ruling CDU/CSU + FDP coalition negotiated an agreement with Switzerland that untaxed German money in Swiss bank accounts could be subjected to a one-time tax (21% to 41%) and repatriated to Germany with no prosecution for tax evasion. This agreement had to be ratified by German parliament but was not because the SPD and Green Party objected to the low rates, saying tax avoiders would be granted immunity yet pay a lower overall tax rate than people who had obeyed the laws. The matter will now undergo arbitration.

Update on 06 Dec 2012: A tax agreement between Greece and Switzerland is under discussion that it is hoped would return 9 billion euros to Greece. Again, the tax evaders would pay between 21% and 41% and remain anonymous. Negotiations have been ongoing for two years. Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that over 20 billion euros were moved from Greece to Swiss banks between 2009 and 2011.

Gerhard Schick, finance speaker for the Green Party in the Bundestag, said in a position paper quoted in this Süddeutsche Zeitung article about the constitutionally anchored tax-free status of Greek shipping families that the EU should be negotiating these tax agreements with Switzerland, that the Swiss tendency to negotiate separately with each EU country gives Switzerland disproportionately too much power. “Divide et impera.”

Update on 12 Dec 2012: Arbitration was unsuccessful.

(SHTOY err OBB come en.)

11 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

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25

Nov

Antrum vastissimum incogniti recessus

“Immense cave, unexplored depths.” Laconic note on a map of Westphalia from 1645 marking the site now known as the Balver Höhle. This karst cave was occupied during the stone age. Now it has been dynamited bigger and is used for multiday concerts and festivals with audiences of thousands of people. Rivers of beer. Schützenfests still take place there every year, and apparently they’ve added a celtic music festival. There used to be a big annual jazz festival there, with Dutchmen wearing lavender and light blue playing great slide guitar and mumbling fake English, interspersed with heartfelt “SHICK AH GO!”s.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

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18

Nov

Eile mit Weile

Goethe’s charming translation of “festina lente,” “make haste slowly.” The motto of the Roman emperor Augustus, who struck coins that used images of a crab and a butterfly to illustrate it. Wikipedia says other animal pairings used to indicate the motto over the years have included “a hare in a snail shell, a chameleon with a fish,” a tortoise with a sail on its back and a dolphin around an anchor.

(EYE leh   mit   VYE leh.)

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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28

Oct

Causa Strepp, Causa Horst Seehofer

“The Strepp Affair,” “The Case of Horst Seehofer.” The Bavarian state branch of Angela Merkel’s CDU party insists on remaining separate from the general CDU and calls itself the CSU. Horst Seehofer is in charge. The CSU has been posturing in national politics for an upcoming state election. Last Sunday, CSU spokesperson Hans Michael Strepp called the public broadcasting ZDF television station and said he’d heard they were going to broadcast a news report about the rival Bavarian SPD’s recent festive nomination of their top candidate, Christian Ude. Strepp told ZDF that neither the public broadcasting ARD nor the public broadcasting news and documentaries channel Phoenix was planning to report on the Bavarian SPD’s state convention and far be it from Strepp to want to tell them their business but he wanted to give them food for thought that there could be discussions afterward if ZDF went it alone. ZDF interpreted this as exerting influence and broadcast the report anyway. Then they broadcast a report about Strepp’s phone call.

At first, the CSU said nothing bad had happened. At noon on Thurs. 25 Oct 2012, Horst Seehofer announced that Spokesperson Strepp had resigned because Strepp had said he hadn’t exerted any influence on ZDF and the ZDF disagreed with that statement and Seehofer could not clarify this situation. The CSU’s position is now that Strepp acted entirely alone. In a lively parliamentary discussion after Seehofer’s announcement of Strepp’s resignation, Bavarian M.P.’s cast a lot of aspersions. CSU General Secretary Alexander Dobrindt has now been dragged into it because he obfuscated rather than clarified and because people find it credible that he might have given Strepp the incredible order to make the call. The Bavarian SPD demanded that Seehofer and Dobrindt resign their seats on ZDF management boards (!).

German Green party member Jürgen Trittin has demanded that all politicians holding government office resign from public broadcasting channels’ supervisory boards. Trittin said the Greens have been demanding this for years, and that a gray zone forms where government and media entangle. Trittin also said this is what you get when people have been in power longer than Fidel Castro.

(COW zah   SHTREP,   COW zah   Horst   ZAY hoaf er.)

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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18

Apr

Kümmelspalter

“Caraway seed splitter,” cymini sectores. Someone who lacks the big picture.

(COO mell shpol ter.)

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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