Swiss curent event

The article I read was Swiss tax system needs reform says OECD. This article talked about the many problems the Swiss economy and how they are trying to repair and boost the Swiss economy. This is a problem which has recently affected the United States and is still continuing to affect the United States with the Unites States trillions of dollars in debt and just recovering from a recession this is a way the United States relates to the Swiss. The first thing that the Swiss wanted to change in this article is the high income tax return of which is making people have to pay less tax on house hold income which is where most taxes from the Swiss come from instead of like how it is in the Unite States which is from sales. The Swiss had a thought of some method would not only improve the economy but prevent future down turn of their economy. The first of which is that they want to rebalance the Swiss tax system and do so by increasing the taxes on consumer goods but at the same time lower the personal tax rate.  The second thing mentioned is that the Franc was currently very strong that is bad because it means trading to France would result in a loss of money. The reason considered to have caused this loss of value was the slowing of trade to Germany which is a stronger partner for the Swiss to trade to. With trading sped back up to Germany the economy should return to normal. The third thing mentioned was how the banks remained the same and stagnant. This was due to the amount of leverage not being changed. Overall I feel that this is an all too familiar situation. When I read this it took me back to a few years ago when the United States was in the middle of the recession. Even now the United States is still very deep in debt but there are signs of recovery this will be an interesting story to follow to see if the Swiss can pull themselves out of this.

Assignment 1

 

The article I chose was Criticism Mounts against Anti-Nazi Website. This website is led by a right wing group known as anonymous which has been siring up not just problems in Germany but also in the United States. Anonymous is a group of hackers who will hack into a website and then post private information from the hacked site onto their leak website.       This group was originally just in Germany but it has gained support and other groups have formed worldwide. While this group has caused problems for Germany recently when the United States based company PayPal refused to transport donations to this group they had crashed the server and made them unable to operate for a few hours. This is just one incident of how this problem is affecting both the United States and Germany.  This just shows how far people will go to get rid of a great negative that affected the German past and culture.

          I chose this article for many reason one reason I chose this article is because I was interested about what it was about. With the title Criticism mounts against anti-Nazi website I didn’t know what to expect. But after I read the article I realized that the title was not as appropriate as perhaps the Risk of the Hacker Group Anonymous. This article was more so about the hacker group known as Anonymous then the anti-nazi website. I did find this article interesting to read and informative due to the fact that this small extremist group had managed to crash huge businesses such as PayPal with little effort and render it off line for a few hours. Or how the group managed to hack into Visa the credit card company getting peoples account numbers which is a crime. I personally feel that authorities should hunt this group down and put an end to them because this is dangerous to have a group that can get any information from any agency or business. What is to stop these people from getting military secrets and selling them endangering many lives? Until they are stopped no one is safe from this radical group.
             

Source:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,808022,00.html

german culture

German culture is the same and is different in many ways from the US culture. We have the same holidays but at the same time many different holidays and ways to celebrate each holiday weather is traditional to us or completely different. When I thought of Germany and the German people before my German class I thought of stereo typical German lieder hosen and sausage and many other German foods not to mention the beer. But now since I have taken this class I have realized how different my view has become although the stereotypical stuff is somewhat there but it is not only thing I think of throughout the lessons the teacher has shown me the side that we never see.

           For example today in class the teacher told us how nude beaches and clubs are accepted which is not the case here as we know. Or that they always keep their necks covered or they view they will get sick these are just some examples of how their cultures are different than ours. But in a sense we are still the same in Cincinnati the German culture is still apparent not just because of Oktoberfest but because of the names we still call our family members and other things like Oma and Opa for grandma and grandpa.  But now my view of what German is has changed like mentioned before it is still somewhat the same but it has changed I no longer see a German as a drunk sausage eating guy wearing lieder hosen. I see much more I see the creativity and the more open beliefs and I more clearly see the German in me by the German traditions passed down to me by my German ancestors.