Unlike President Biden's frequent efforts to blame Vladimir Putin for inflation, Germany's energy-driven economic woes really can be largely linked to Russia, which cut the flow of natural gas in retaliation for economic sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine. Since Germany is the economic powerhouse of the continent, that's bad news for the European Union. But a bigger issue is dependency on energy sourced from Russia, a vulnerability rooted in well-intentioned policy that made the continent heavily dependent on an unreliable partner.
Germany is "teetering on the brink of a recession," The Wall Street Journal's Tom Fairless reported this week. That's familiar news to Americans who are suffering a similar economic contraction by whatever name the White House wants to use. But Germany's problems are more specifically connected to its inability to keep the lights on. "The country's energy crisis deepened Wednesday, when Russia slashed the natural gas that flows to Western Europe through its Nord Stream pipeline," Fairless added.
