{"id":744,"date":"2009-03-22T11:25:42","date_gmt":"2009-03-22T18:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/22\/bailouts-needed-everywhere\/"},"modified":"2009-03-22T11:25:44","modified_gmt":"2009-03-22T18:25:44","slug":"bailouts-needed-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/22\/bailouts-needed-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Bailouts needed everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Germany, the legalized prostitution industry has fallen on hard times.<\/a><\/p>\n

Hoping for more success, many women are driven from the clubs to the kerbs to sell their bodies on their own terms.<\/p>\n

An increasing number of men on a tight budget are also picking up prostitutes on street corners rather than in pricey brothels or “Eros Centres.”<\/p>\n

Some places have been forced to shut their doors and in January, sex-shop owners and porn producers pushed for state aid, taking their lead from the crisis-hit auto and banking industries.<\/p>\n

Erotic trade federation official Uwe Kaltenberg, said that “economic aid would be judicious.”<\/p>\n

Heitmann is now afraid that waning turnover could damage the industry’s reputation even more and that back-street prostitution could escalate.<\/p>\n

Barbara Kavemann, professor at the Berlin Research Institute for Social Science and Women Studies, said the full impact of the financial crisis could not be determined because there was no concrete data.<\/p>\n

“Firstly, prostitutes don’t legally have to be registered, and secondly, who defines who is a prostitute?” said Kavemann.<\/p>\n

But Isabelle and other brothel owners do not need empirical data or definitions to confirm the impact of the credit crunch on the sex industry has been hard.<\/p>\n

“The only thing we can do now is keep our fingers crossed and hope for better times,” she said, “and obviously I wouldn’t say no to a state-funded cash injection.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll bet. One thing about it: I’m sure they have some leverage with local government officials.<\/p>\n

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