Czar Nicholas I of Russia in 1853 is said to have described the Ottoman Empire as the "Sick man of Europe."
The phrase "the sick man of Europe" appeared in The New York Times in 1860.
The empire's decline was very long and after the Second World War, France, Britain and Italy earned the label "the sick man of Europe."
In 1967 the British government devalued the pound sterling against other currencies.
Harold Wilson, the prime minister said “From now on, the pound abroad is worth 14% or so less in terms of other currencies. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued.”
In 1971 President Nixon ended the postwar system where currencies were fixed to the dollar.
In 1976 the UK government called on the International Monetary (IMF) for a bailout.
Germany
The cost of German reunification in 1990 was estimated to be over €1.5 trillion, according to a statement from Freie Universität Berlin.
Germany's unemployment rate rose from 9.2% in 1998 to 11.1% in 2005. There was a recession in 2003.
High taxes and labour costs are common in German companies.
Germany has the sixth highest corporate income tax rate among OECD countries, at 29.9%, including a 5.5 surtax. The tax burden on labour is the second-highest in the OECD, with a total tax wedge of 47.8% on the average single worker.
Companies are limited in the amount of net operating losses they can use to offset income on future or previous tax returns, with special limits on local business tax liability.
"The 2014 article "From Sick Man of Europe to Economic Superstar: Germany's Resurgent Economy" by Christian Dustmann, Bernd Fitzenberger, Uta Schönberg, and Alexandra Spitz-Oener, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, discusses how Germany's economy transformed from the "sick man of Europe" to an "economic superstar" in less than a decade.
The "economic superstar" over-relied on Russian fuel and the Chinese market.
Germany's coalition government announced a reversal of policy in 2011, that all the country's nuclear power plants would be phased out by 2022. The decision made Germany the biggest industrial power to announce the end of nuclear energy.
It was Angela Merkel biggest blunder.
Germany expects its economy to contract by 0.2% in 2024, which is a sign of no growth.
According to Reuters if economic output contracts for a second consecutive year, last happened in 2002-2003 when exporting and manufacturing industries struggled.
Germany would be the only G7 economy in contraction, according to the latest projections of the International Monetary Fund.
Volkswagen Group has been four decades in China, selling Volkswagen Santanas to Audis and Porsches. But VW has been replaced in China by BYD.
"BYD rapidly expanded all-electric car sales over the past three years, forcing VW to make a big bet last year on that market. Then BYD caught VW off guard again early this year by ramping up sales of plug-in gasoline-electric hybrids that can go long distances on only battery power, with tiny gasoline engines as backups. VW has few offerings in that fast-growing category, a gaping hole it won’t fully close until the end of next year."
Job losses are inevitable in Germany and there is Trump on the horizon.
According to the national statistical agency, German consumers are now saving 11.1% of their income, twice as much as their US peers — thus slowing down the economy even further.
The FT says that German industrial output has been on a downward trend since the end of 2017 Industrial production (volume terms, Dec 1991 = 100). Figures are average annual growth over each shaded period.
Germany’s Real Challenges are Aging, Underinvestment, and Too Much Red Tape - IMF
Germany’s growth model is broken
Financial Times: Is Germany’s business model broken? All three of the country’s major industries are in crisis, and the economy is flatlining. Are politicians finally waking up?
Germany is in a structural crisis — with falling exports, soaring energy prices, and weakening competitiveness in its most important sectors. However, according to the bosses of Germany’s biggest businesses, the real problem is that its workers take too much sick leave.
Millions of Germans are calling in sick to work at a rate nearly four times that seen in the UK, giving a whole new meaning to the country’s unfortunate
“Sick Man of Europe”
"Employees took 15 days of sick leave in 2022 in Germany. By comparison, UK workers, lost 5.7 days to illness in the same year. These findings haven’t been lost on Germany’s employers, who don’t sound convinced that their employees are genuinely ill."
Unemployment is at a low 6% but "According to experts, this is the first time in 20 years that unemployment has not fallen noticeably in the last months of the year."
The dysfunctional government chiefs
Scholz is the German Chancellor and leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck’s is left-leaning Greens and Christian Lindner, Federal Finance Minister, and pro-business Free Democrats — a party that in recent decades has mostly allied with conservatives — set out in 2021 to form an ambitious, progressive coalition straddling ideological divisions that would modernize Germany.
The Washington Post said "Last week, Habeck proposed a state investment fund to help companies of every size. It was promptly rejected by both Lindner and Scholz. Lindner’s party organized a meeting with leaders of business associations for Tuesday, the same day that Scholz had already arranged a closed-door meeting of his own with industry and union leaders.
Scholz said, “We must get away from theatre stages; we must get away from something being presented and proposed that then isn’t accepted by everyone.”
Still, his coalition partners weren’t invited to his own meeting with industry leaders.
On Wednesday, October 06, Christian Lindner was fired from the German government.
"A picture is worth a thousand words" — Lindner with Scholz in the Bundestag (the German federal parliament)
