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One of the things I've always loved about Germans (even when I don't) is that earnestness that so often manifests as bluntness.  A lot of Germans have great difficulty in understanding why they should dissemble in social situations, or why the circumlocutions of politesse should take any precedence over the clarity of an undecorated statement of accurate fact.


So I just want to hug the Germans this week for knocking the first real cracks in the conspiracy of silence that reigns among the world's leading nations, when it comes to both climate change and the end of cheap oil.  First was the leaked military report that demonstrated that, public rhetoric aside, the German government is drawing up contingency plans for the end of the cheap oil era.  It forecasts nothing short of the end of the global capitalist system.  And now Deutsche Bank releases an assessment of it's thinking on investments that is equally blunt about the head-in-the-sand attitude that the US government epitomizes about the changes coming down the pipeline.

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