Dialog International

Mosebach: Make Blasphemy Punishable Under Law

The Roman Catholic novelist and essayist Martin Mosebach cheered when then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expelled or excommunicated theologians and activists from the Church for blasphemous or heretical ideas.  But what to do about non-Catholics who insult the Church?  Recently the humor magazine Titanic caused a mini-scandal by having an incontinent Pope Benedict XIV on its cover.  That was too much for Mosebach, who in a recent essay writes that blasphemy should be punishable under German law. Mosebach is full of admiration for Muslim clerics who issue fatwas when a blogger or artist commit blasphemy:

 In diesem Zusammenhang will ich nicht verhehlen, dass ich unfähig bin, mich zu empören, wenn in ihrem Glauben beleidigte Muslime blasphemischen Künstlern – wenn wir sie einmal so nennen wollen – einen gewaltigen Schrecken einjagen. Ich begrüße es, wenn es in unserer Welt wieder Menschen wie Jean Jacques Rousseau gibt, für die Gott anwesend ist. Es wird das soziale Klima fördern, wenn Blasphemie wieder gefährlich wird.

(In this connection I must confess that I am unable to muster much outrage when Muslims whose faith has been insulted put a terrible fear in the hearts of blasphemous artists - if you can call them such.  I would be happy if there were more people today like Jean Jacques Rousseau who feel the presence of God.  Society would be much improved if blasphemy were dangerous again.)

Mosebach attempts to make a case under German law that blasphemy is unconstitutional, pointing out that the Preamble of the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law) makes specific reference to God:

Betrachtet man das Grundgesetz, so ist die Antwort einfach: Das Grundgesetz ist seiner Präambel nach „im Bewusstsein der Verantwortung vor Gott und den Menschen“ formuliert worden – die Frage, an welchen Gott die Väter und Mütter dieses Verfassungswerks gedacht haben mögen, ist ebenfalls leicht zu beantworten: Es war der Gott des Christentums, an einen anderen dürfte man Ende der 1940er Jahre schwerlich gedacht haben.

(The answer is simple if one just reads the Grundgesetz.  In the Peamble it clearly states that the drafters are "conscious of their responsibility before God and man." There can also be no doubt concerning to which God the mothers and fathers of the constitution were referring. It was the God of Christianity - it would have been difficult to conceive of any other at the end of the 1940s.) 

But the Grundgesetz also protects freedom of artistic expression.  And the Criminal Code of Germany (Strafgesetzbuch) explicitly deals with religious tolerance (Paragraph 166):

Any person who insults, publicly or by distribution of written material (§ 11 Abs. 3), the tenets of the religious or ideological denomination of other persons in such a way as to disturb the public peace is liable to punishment by imprisonment for up to three years or by a fine.

The key phrase is "disturb the public peace" ( den öffentlichen Frieden ... stören).  Germany today is a secular society, and people are not inclined to riot in the streets every time the pope is criticized or Jesus is mocked.

On the other hand, one could argue that Mosebach's beloved Church has violated Article 1 of the Grundgesetz in its systematic cover-up of massive child rape by priests and therefore deserves all the scorn it reaps today:

(1) Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.

((1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority)

Deutsche Bank steps up its financial contributions to Mitt Romney

While most German firms are betting that President Obama will be reelected and are channeling their political contributions accordingly, but Deutsche Bank, long with Allianz, is hoping for a Republican victory in Novemver.  So Deutsche Bank is channeling contribution to the campaign of Mitt Romney: 

Nur die Deutsche Bank und der Allianz-Versicherungskonzern favorisieren demnach den republikanischen Herausforderer und Ex-Gouverneur von Massachusetts Mitt Romney (siehe Grafik). Zwar ist es allen Unternehmen in den USA verboten, direkt für eine Partei oder einen Kandidaten zu spenden. Doch dürfen sie sogenannte Politische Aktionskomitees (PACs) gründen. Die sammeln vor allem unter leitenden Angestellten und Geschäftspartnern für die Kandidaten.

(Only Deutsche Bank and Allianz Insurance Group favor the Republican challenger and former Nassachusetts governor Mitt Romney.  Although companies in the US are prohibited from contributing directly to a political party or candidtae, they are allowed to form Political Action Committees (PACs) which can collect funds from senior managers and business partners for candidates.)

It doesn't take a genius to understand why Deutsche Bank would back Mitt Romney:

Deutsche Bank und Allianz verbinden mit ihrer Pro-Romney-Initiative offenbar die Hoffnung, dass der Republikaner eine Politik verfolgt, die Finanzinstitutionen gegenüber freundlicher gesonnen ist als die von Obama.

(Deutsche Bank and Allianz's pro-Romney iniative reflects their hope that the Republican will support policies that are friendlier to financial institutions than Obama.)

Yes, it is clear that a Romney administration would quash any attempts to prosecute Deutsche Bank for its criminal manipulation of Libor and other interest rate benchmarks, or for its privotal role in the subprime mortgage crisis.  For the ethos of Deutsche Bank coincides perfectly with Romney's vulture capalisatic vision for America.  And there is always the hope that a President Romney could influence the channeling of investment banking business to Deutsche Bank from Bain Capital and the other private equity "locusts" (Heuschrecke)  whoe are funneling $$millions to the Romney campaign. 

Happy Glock-Day, America!

While families in Colorado mourn yet another senseless mass killing, the finance department at Glock Ges.m.b.H. in Deutsch-Wagram is popping champagne corks.  These are halcyon days for Austria's Deadliest Import.  The Glock has cemented its position as the weapon of choice for mass killers - and not just in America: 

Norwegian far-Right extremist Anders Behring Breivik used a Glock 17 to kill most of the 67 people he shot dead during his massacre on the island of Utoya a year ago this Sunday.

Sweden's Peter Mangs, the man accused of being behind to more than a dozen shootings of immigrants in the city of Malmo, owned a Glock 19.

Germany's Robert Steinhäuser, who killed 17 people in the 2001 Erfurt massacre, used a Glock 17.

But only in America does this deadly mayhem lead to a spike in the sales of Glock pistols.  For the United States is the only place where any lunatic can walk into a gun store and purchase a Glock. And the more Americans are gunned downed by Glock owners, the more people want to own Glocks. 

It is no mystery why Glocks are coveted by mass kilers.  Glocks are excellent killing machines which can easily be optimized with enhanced magazine clips:

According to Paul Barrat, the author of Glock: The Rise of America's Gun, the magazine is the main attraction.

"This magazine is so large, it actually sticks out the bottom of the handle of the gun, of the grip," he told an American radio station earlier this year.

"And you can fire it very quickly, and you can get off that large number of rounds before you have to reload." The weapon is now used by two-thirds of US police departments and has featured in countless films.

Thanks to the cowardice of politicians and the power of the NRA, people can now take their Glocks practically everywhere in the US: churches, taverns, state houses,  - even airport lobbies.

Americans, there is an excellent chance that there iwill be a Glock in your future - or at least the bullet from one. 

Neckermann shut down by US private equity "locust"

Germans are well acquainted with the practices of US private equity firms.  They call them Heuschrecke ("locusts")  because they often take controlling interests in companies, load them with debt while paying themselves lavish "management fees'.  Once the companies are hollowed out, they force the companies into insolvencey, leaving the workers without employment.  The locust then moves on to its next victim.

That is, sadly, exactly what happened to the iconic German catlogue company Neckermann, which was acquired by US private equity company Sun Capital Partners. 

German mail-order company Neckermann says it is applying for bankruptcy protection from creditors after failing to satisfy its owner that cost-cutting plans would produce a viable business.

Neckermann said the application was being filed Wednesday at a court in Frankfurt.

The struggling company planned to cut 1,380 of its roughly 2,400 jobs in Germany in order to secure financing for the future. Earlier Wednesday, it agreed with employee and union representatives on a compromise that would have seen "limited" payoffs and other aid for laid-off employees.

But Neckermann said its owner decided the result wasn't sustainable and refused to provide further financing.

 And so 2,400 workers have lost their livelihood.  Time for the "locust" to move on - "Die Heuschrecke zieht weiter": 

Noch im April wollte Sun Capital 25 Millionen in Neckermann.de investieren. Sun Capital gilt als sogenannte Heuschrecke der Finanzwelt. Darunter verstehen Experten Investoren, die einem Unternehmen solange zuträglich sind, wie es schwarze Zahlen schreibt. Fällt ein Unternehmen in die roten Zahlen, verlässt die „Finanz-Heuschrecke“ das Betätigungsfeld und zieht weiter, ohne Rücksicht auf die Konseqenzen für Mitarbeiter und betroffenes Unternehmen.

(As late as April Sun Capital wanted to invest 25 million euros in Neckermann.  Sun Capital is viewed as a socalled locust in the fiancial industry.  Experts see them as investors who are beneficial to companies as long as they are profitable.  If a company starts losing money, however, the "finance locust" withdraws from the field of action and moves on, without any consideration for the employees of the company.)

Americans are now learning the truth about private equity as they learn more about the record of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose compnay Bain Capital set the gold standard for predatory locust behavior.  Romney made hundreds of millions putting debt into its portfolio companies, off-shoring and oursourcin the US jobs, firing the remaining workers, and they hiding the profits in Swiss and Cayman Islands accounts. 

See my post  A Locust in the White House?  

Deutsche Bank part of "criminal ring" to falsify interest rates?

Last week I wrote about the ongoing investigation into Deutsche Bank and its involvement in the LIBOR manipulation scandal.  Now, according to the Financial Times, Deutsche Bank may have been one of 4 banks who colluded to rig benchmark rates to their advantage:

Regulators are focusing on at least four of Europe’s biggest banks as they investigate the attempted manipulation of the region’s benchmark interest rate, suspecting that Barclays’ traders were the ringleaders of a circle that included Crédit Agricole, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale.

Evidence of links between traders at all four banks and Barclays’ former euroswaps trader Philippe Moryoussef is under scrutiny, people involved in the process have told the Financial Times.

The FInancial TImes also identifies the key traders alledgedly involved in the ciminal ring:

  According to an FT investigation, Mr Moryoussef is alleged to have contacted a number of traders whom he knew at other banks, either through previous employment or via professional or personal networks. Regulators are looking at suspected communication with Michael Zrihen at Crédit Agricole, Didier Sander at HSBC and Christian Bittar at Deutsche Bank, all of whom no longer work at the groups in question, according to people familiar with the investigations.

What is interesting is that the LIBOR manipulation began much earlier than originally suspected.  It was thought that the rate-rigging took place in the 2007 - 2009 time frame - a the height of the financial meltdown - to make certain banks look healthier than they actually were.  But apparently the "ring" was active even long before the crisis:

However, the alleged involvement of traders at Crédit Agricole, HSBC, Deutsche and SocGen, predates the financial crisis by several years. Barclays’ settlement with regulators made it clear that there were two distinct periods of attempted manipulation – the first for trading gain, the second for broader reasons of financial stability.

All of the alleged illiegal activity at Deutsche Bank took place during the era of Josef Ackermann.  And the London trader identified worked in the group overseen by Anshu Jain - Deutsche Bank's current CEO.

 

Review: Wolfgang Koeppen's Amerikafahrt

At the height of the Cold War the United States government made a concerted effort to attract European intellectuals to the "American Way of Life."  In 1958 the US State Department invited the great writer Wolfgang Koeppen to travel across the US - at the expense of US taxpayers.  The result was a fascinating travelogue, originally intended for German radio, but later published as Amerikafahrt.

Although this was Koeppen's first trip to America, it was really a homecoming, since he had traveled to America so often in his mind.  Koeppen read all the American writers, but his image of America was perhaps shaped most by a writer who never set foot on US shores - Franz Kafka with his early novel Amerika.  Koeppen had encountered American GIs in US-occupied Munich.  And his postwar masterpiece - Tauben im Gras ("Pigeons in the Grass") - was Koeppen's reckoning with America. Or, rather, with the America of his imagination. 

Koeppen arrived in New York Harbor on an ocean liner, and, setting foot on American soil, is overcome with a sense of homecoming, but also a strong feellng of freedom:

Ich stand in New York.  Ich hatte dies oft geträumt, und es war nun wie ein Traum; und wie im Traum gab es kiene Fremde. Ich war auch hier zu Hause, und Amerika lag vor mir wie ein fester Besitz. Ich spürte Freiheit. Ich empfand Freiheit. Die Freiheit war der Wind.

In New York, Koeppen is in his element.  He feels a special affinity to the city and its people. Later he often told friends that he wished he could spend an entire year living in New York and writing.  Alas, that never happened, but Koeppen did manage to return to the city he loved several times, including one last visit in 1987 shortly before he died.  I consider myself a New Yorker, but it is wonderful to see the city through the eyes of a modernist genius.  Koeppen explored every corner of Manhattan, and even ventured to the other boroughs.  Koeppen's writing made me nostalgic for a place that has largely vanished.  Today Times Square is a sanitized Disney Land East for tourists, but in Amerikafahrt 42nd St.  lives in all its past seedy glory - the peep shows, the greasy spoons, the human spectacle are all here. (Im Tageslicht glich der Broadway hier der Hamburger Reeperbahn, bevor am Abend die Lichter des Vergnügens angehen und die Mädchen sich geschminkt haben).

Koeppen leaves the Manhattan of John Dos Passos and travels south to the Washington DC of Walt Whitman and LIncoln, then by train to the Deep South of William Faulkner.  In New Orleans he searches without success for the jazz of his youth - but it has disappeared.  He then travels west through the desert to Los Angeles, where he peeks behind Hollywood's facade. Then on to San Francisco, back east through Upton Sinclair's cattle yards and slaughter houses in Chicago, then a brief visit in staid and European Boston, and finally back to New York - where he flies back to Germany.

Koeppen was fascinated by race relations in the US - one of the central themes of Tauben im Gras. In 1958, the civil rights movement hadn't really gathered steam, but Koeppen could sense that change was in the air.  Everywhere he went he sought out black people - in black churches, black cemeteries, black diners, black waiting rooms in southern train stations.  He felt completely at home in Harlem,  In Chicago he met with the CEO of Ebony Magazine.  He wrote about his feelings has his train enters the Deep South:

Wir waren in die dunklen Staaten der Rassentrennung gekommen.  Wartesäle, Speiseräume für diese oder jene Haut, Pervertierungen der menschlichen Würde...

Whenever possible, Koeppen would sit in the "Colored" sections, knowing he could get away with it as a "dumb tourist".

The other aspect of America that Koeppen captures so brilliantly in Amerikafahrt it the sense of loneliness that pervades so much of American society.  We catch glimpses of Edward Hopper's America from the train, as it passes through small towns, or on Broadway in mid-town Manhattan, or even with the Beats that Koeppen finds in San Francisco.  Here is Koeppen at a strip club in Washington DC - a stone's throw from the Capitol building:

Man konnte glauben, mit dem Wesen, das sich da mit starrem Lächeln anbot, allein zu sein, allein mit dem Mädchen, das man für seine Träume kaufte. Wieder war hier stark die Einsamkeit zu spüren, die besondere amerikanishe Einsamkeit, vor der sich Amerikaner fürchten und die sie hassen.

(One could pretend to be alone with the creature, who offered herself with the fixed smile, to be alone with the girl that one could buy for his fantasies.  Eveb here there was a strong sense of loneliness, that certain American loneliness that Americans both fear and hate. ) 

I have some good news for English readers: in August 2012 Berghan books will be releasing an English translation of Wolfgang Koeppen's Amerikafahrt (Journey Through America, translated by Michael Kimmage).  I urge you to pick up a copy, along with Pigeons on the Grass.

Film Review: Michael

What is it about Austrians and their cellars?  First we were shocked by the case of Natascha Kampusch, who was abducted off the street at age 10 and kept in a cellar for eight years before finally escaping.  But that was just a foretast of the horror to come. In 2008 the world learned about Josef Fritzl, who kept his own daughter captive in the cellar of his house and fathered seven children with her.  Referring to the Fritzl case, Elfriede Jelinek wrote: 

Österreich ist eine kleine Welt, in der die große ihre Probe hält. Im  noch viel kleineren Kellerverlies von Amstetten findet die Aufführung statt, täglich, nächtlich. Es fällt keine Aufführung wegen irgendetwas aus. (aus "Im Verlassenen")  

(‘Austria is a small world in which the big world holds its rehearsal. The performance takes place in the very much smaller cellar dungeon in Amstetten – daily, nightly. No performance is ever missed … Performances are all there can ever be.’)

In his 2011 film Michael, (available now in the US on DVD)  director Markus Schleinzer takes us down into the cellar of one perfectly average Austrian house to watch the daily and nightly horror performance.  Hollywood spends up to $100 million to produce the average blockbuster horror movie, but Michael is ten times more bone chilling than anything from Hollywood - at a budget of under $1 million.

What is so horrifying is that everything on the surface seems perfectly normal.  Michael, the main character ( brilliantly played by Michael Fuith) is seen coming home from his hum-drum job at an insurance company with his sack of groceries. He casually cooks dinner while watching television and then opens the locked cellar door to let in a boy of about ten years - Wolfgang - who is told to set the table.  The two eat dinner together, the boy is allowed to watch a bit of television, and then is sent back down into the cellar.  The next morning Michael rapes the boy before heading off to work. That is the routine - daily, nightly. No performance is ever missed (Jelinek).  We don't know how long this routine has been going on, but it must be for years. Wolfgang writes letters to his lost family which are intercepted by Michael and neatly filed.  We see a large stack of them. 

Michael is able to function normally at his office job, and even receives a promotion.  It seems like the routine will go on forever with Wolfgang in the cellar, but things began to unravel when the boy becomes ill.  Michael diecides Wolfgang needs a companion - or perhaps he's getting too old for Michael's taste?  In a terrifying scene he nearly succeeds in abducting a young boy at a video arcade,  It all seems so easy and perfectly normal.

Schleinzer does a masterful job of building suspense, so by the final, incredibly chilling, scene I nearly yelling at the screen.  I can't think of another film that so perfectly captures the banality of evil.

Michael is just one of several terrific recent films from Austrian directors.  Both Benjamin Heisenberg's 2010 film Der Räuber and especially Götz Spielmann's 2008 film Revanche are must-see's for anyone interested in current film.  Sadly, these films received little or no notice when they were finally shown on American screens. 

The Lies of Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel may be despised on the streets of Athens, but she is riding high in the recent polls conducted in Germany.  Germans apparently feel that Angie is looking out for German interests as she admonishes the rest of Europe to cut spending.

The new president of Germany, Joachim Gauk, rained on her parade with some (admittedly mild) criticism that the chancellor "has a duty to explain in a very detailed way" what the policies designed to save the single currency meant for the average person.

But Stephan Hebel in the Frankfurter Rundschau has a much harsher assessment of Angela Merkel's crisis management.  The Eurozone in its present form cannot survive, and the chancellor's Germany-centric policies that play well to German electorate are dishonest:

Die Euro-Krise sagt uns also vor allem eines, und genau das sagt die deutsche Kanzlerin nicht: Schon die gemeinsame Währung selbst trug Züge einer imperialen, am vordergründigen nationalen Interesse ausgerichteten Politik der deutschen Regierungen. Und es ist genau diese deutsche Vorherrschaft, die Merkel retten will, wenn sie sagt, sie rette den Euro.

Wollte sie aber eine Politik betreiben, die sie ehrlich erklären kann, dann müsste sie die Arbeit an einem solidarischen und deshalb zukunftstauglichen Europa jetzt beginnen. Sie müsste sich an die Spitze derer stellen, die Strategien und demokratische Institutionen für eine echte gemeinsame Wirtschaftspolitik entwickeln. Für ein Europa, in dem der Kampf um ausgeglichene Haushalte und gegen Verschwendung sehr wohl Platz hat, nicht aber die Macht des Stärksten, sich auf Kosten der Schwächeren zu bereichern.Sie hat sich anders entschieden.

Merkel betreibt einseitige Interessenpolitik – ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste und immer gerade so lange, bis Frankreich oder das Bundesverfassungsgericht sie ein bisschen bremst. Und sie erzählt uns, dieses Spiel mit dem Feuer sei im deutschen Interesse. Das ist die Lüge der Angela Merkel.

("The euro crisis tells us one thing above all, and that's precisely what the German chancellor does not tell us: the common currency has always borne the traits of an imperialist, primarily nationally-oriented policy on the part of the German government. And it is exactly this German dominance that Merkel is attempting to salvage when she says she's bailing out the euro. ... If what she wanted was to implement a policy that she can explain in all honesty, she'd have to start working right away on a Europe that can withstand the passage of time, a Europe of solidarity. She would have to represent those who are developing strategies and democratic institutions for a true common economic policy. For a Europe in which the battle for balanced budgets and against profligacy have a firmly established place. And one where the strongest cannot enrich themselves at the expense of the weakest. But she has decided on a different course. Merkel's policy is based on special interests - without regard for losses and for as long as she can get away with it, until France or the Federal Constitutional Court slow her down somewhat. And she tells us that this playing with fire is in the interest of Germany. That is Angela Merkel's lie.")

Roubini: "I give the Euro three to six months"

New York economist-seer Nouriel Roubini (aka "Dr. Doom") predicted the global economic meltdown in 2008.  Now, in a gloomy interview in the Handelsblatt, he sees bad things happening to the Euro unless emergency pan-European measures are taken: 

 Europa hat aber doch keine Zeit mehr. Europa ist wie ein Auto, das auf eine Mauer zurast. Jetzt muss man abbiegen. Die Euro-Zone muss sich stärker integrieren. Das heißt: Fiskalunion mit gemeinsamer Schuldenlast wie Euro-Bonds, Bankenunion und gemeinsamer Einlagensicherung. Und: Es braucht eine Transferunion für Länder wie Griechenland. Es muss ein Wachstumspakt her, der die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit wiederherstellt. Immer weiter zu sparen würde die Rezession nur verschlimmern

(Europe has run out of time.  Europe is like a car that is racing headon into a wall. It needs to turn now.  The Euro-zone must be more tightly integrated.  That means a fiscal union with a common sharing of debt obligations such as Eurobonds, a union of the banks and a common deposit insurance. And: there needs to be a transfer union for countries like Greece.  There needs to a growth pact that restores competitiveness.  Just focusing on savings would make the recession much worse.)

Germans like to point their finger at the Greeks for their profligate ways and non-existant work ethic, but Roubini sees plenty of blame to go around:

Deutschland ist mitschuldig. Es wollte um jeden Preis seine Exporte absetzen, ob sich das Land diese leisten konnte oder nicht. Fahren Sie mal nach Griechenland, fast jeder Taxifahrer hat einen BMW oder Mercedes, brandneu, modern und schick, wie man sie sonst nur in New York und anderen reichen Städten sieht. Konnten sie sich die Fahrzeuge leisten? Nein. Das war ein System des Lieferkredits. Das funktionierte so lange, wie die Zinsen niedrig waren und die Märkte offen. Jeder Grieche konnte einen BMW kaufen. Aber braucht man den, um die Menschen in der Stadt herumzufahren? In New York haben wir die gelben Taxen, das sind keine BMWs. Aber solange ein Banker in Frankfurt ihnen das Geld lieh, haben sie sich die Autos gekauft. Wer trägt hier die Schuld, die Griechen oder Deutschen?

(Germany is also to blame. It wanted to sell its exports whether or not the country could pay for them.  Just go to Greece; practically every taxi driver has a BMW or a Mercedes, brand new, modern, fashionable - something you would normally just see in wealthy cities like New York.  Could they afford these cars?  No, it was just the supplier loans. And that worked well as long as the interest rates were low and the markets open.  But do you need these cars to drive people around town?  In New York we have Yellow Cabs - those aren't BMWs.  But as long as a banker in Frankfurt was willing to lend them money, they bought the cars.  So who's to blame here, the Greeks or the Germans.)

Roubini sees that Europe must find its own way out of the crisis.  Political paralysis prevents the United States from playing a constructive role.  And the US has its own fiscal problems.  In fact, Dr. Doom paints a "perfect storm" doomsday scenario:

Im nächsten Jahr kommt es vielleicht zum perfekten Sturm. Die Euro-Zone könnte sich auflösen, die USA die Fiskalklippe herunterfallen, Chinas Wachstum abrupt schwächer werden, wie schon in Brasilien oder Indien.

(We may have a perfect storm next year.  The Euro-zone could unravle, the US could fall off a fiscal cliff , and China's growth could weaken as has alreadry happened in Brazil or India.) 

 

Deutsche Bank investigated for LIBOR manipulation

Barclays Bank was just the first to be accused of artificially manipulating the benchmark LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) and has paid a steep price: the bank must pay a fine of $455 milion and both its CEO and Chairman were forced to step down.  More dismissals and possible criminal charges may follow.

Now there is growing speculation that Deutsche Bank was very much involved in the rate-fixing scheme - which took place over years.  German bank regulators are investigating: 

Germany's markets regulator has launched a special probe into Deutsche Bank over suspected manipulation of interbank lending rates, joining authorities around the globe investigating the world's largest banks, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

And the German BaFin are not the only regulatory bodies looking at Deutsche Bank:

  Deutsche Bank has disclosed that it is cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the European Commission on Libor. These inquiries relate to periods between 2005 and 2011.

Separately, institutional investors in the United States are sueing Deutsche Bank for manipulating the interest rate, which determines the pricing of many loans and fixed income securities: 

Eine zum Frankfurter Bankhaus Metzler gehörende Kapitalanlagegesellschaft habe sich in New York an mehreren Sammelklagen gegen die Deutsche Bank und andere Banken beteiligt, die der Manipulation des Marktzinssatzes Libor bezichtigt werden, bestätigte ein Metzler-Sprecher am Sonntag einen Bericht des "Spiegel". "Das machen zurzeit sehr viele Kapitalanlagegesellschaften". Dem Magazin zufolge lässt die Deutsche Bank seit Monaten von externen Prüfern untersuchen, ob ihre Händler an Manipulationen beteiligt waren. Zwei Mitarbeiter seien bereits suspendiert worden.

(An investment firm belonging to Bankhaus Metzler has joined a class action suit in New York against Deutsche Bank and other banks, which are accused of manipulating LIBOR. A spokesman for Metzler confirmed the report in "Der Spiegel". "At this time four investment firms are involved in the suit." According to the magazine article Deutsche Bank has been investigated for months by external bank examiners concerning possible involvement by bank traders.  Two employees have already been suspended.) 

This new scandal has Anshu Jain's fingerprints all over it; he had been running DB's global markets buisness since 2002.  And, of course, the period in question was during the tenure of Josef Ackermann.  Will the German government take this interest rate manipulation as seriously as the UK government?  Will current and past Deutsche Bank managers be held accountable for their illegal actions?  Or will Angela Merkel throw Ackermann another birthday party?