You may remember that Merckle was murked by short-selling shares in VW, which then skyrocketed after Porsche revealed they owned much of the company, thus losing Merckle, and many others who similarly hedged wrongly, hundreds of millions of euros. Porsche got criticised by some in the financial community, generally the hedge funders who lost big and presumably smashed up their own Porsches in acts of misplaced retribution.

So Merckle won’t be heartened to know that, in a moment of glorious financial symmetry, VW’s employees have made hundreds of millions of euros in selling their shares during the price spike. The board members themselves got in on the action, making €25m between them; meanwhile Merckle is having to dip into his personal fortune to help provide collateral to banks. God, that’s got to hurt.

VW has sensibly tried to morally legitimise this shameless exploitation of good fortune/share manipulation, with the executives announcing that they’re giving 10% of their windfall to charidee, helping little kinder in Wolfsburg where VW is based. Not sure that’s enough – I think you’d need to pay Wolfsburg’s college education and provide free school milk to prevent the inevitable howls of rage over the next few days. Yes, this truly is a classic week for unconvincing PR from major car manufacturers.

I like this bit of padding from the FT when they reported this story today: “The windfall for VW senior management is likely to create political controversy in Germany, where executives of large listed companies are commonly criticised for earning big bonuses”. I think that’s more of a non-Germany-specific thing really.

With consummate German efficiency, WEM issued a three-word statement today: “Negotiations are continuing”. From that we can deduce they haven’t got any money, and whoever’s going to give them some is playing hardball, considering negotiations have been going on since the 20th, when Merckle had to give banks guarantees from his personal fortune after VEM stock plunged. Among the banks involved in this charmingly personal bailout are RBS – must be nice for them to be on the normal side of a deal once again.

Merckle has hopefully avoided the papers today lest he become enraged at the sight of Wendelin Wiedeking, chief executive of Porsche, saying he had nothing to do with the massive inflation of VW’s shares, and it was all the fault of the hedge funds for running short. You will remember that Porsche quietly bought a lot of shares in VW, and then announced that it effectively owned it, causing the remaining 5% of shares to rocket in price and send Porsche’s profits similarly skyward, while those like Merckle who had bet on continuing falls lost big. But Wiedeking has said that to blame Porsche is absurd – after all, they want to increase their stake in VW to 75% soon, and they can’t do that at the current price.

Wiedeking joins Essex council today as people acting like benevolent socialist Care Bears, by pointing out that it’s been paying suppliers in advance, in order to bolster their liquidity in these times of crisis when the mean old German government won’t help them out. With banks refusing loans while trying to maintain minimum reserves, he warned that many healthy companies could go out of business very quickly without them: “We need banks to give credit, not just talk about credit ratings but start real actual lending to companies. These rules are choking us today. Stabilisation of the financial system has to take place rather than banks shifting hundreds of billions of euros to the European Central Bank to earn interest. They should be injecting money so healthy companies survive.”

I love that during this crisis everyone’s on their soapbox, but because no-one knows the answers, titans of business are flexing their political muscles and everyone’s actually listening. Of course Porsche have a vested interest in supplier chains staying strong, but isn’t this all a bit of a PR-pampering exercise from Wiedeking? Porsche goes from producer of CO2-burping twatmobiles to champion of the little guy – just the sort of image boost they need just as no-one can afford their product anymore.

Only 18 hours now Merckle! Boop beep boop beep…

Merckle is the world’s 94th richest man according to Forbes, Germany’s fifth, but his fortunes have been scuppered of late by those flash bastards Porsche. You may remember a couple of weeks back when Volkswagen briefly and ludicrously became the world’s largest company, thanks to Porsche letting slip that they actually now owned it, sending the VW share price rocketing. Merckle, like lots of hedge funds who didn’t see this coming, sold his shares in the company short, leading to a large three-digit million euro loss. Doesn’t look like Merckle is going to be troubling the Mittals and Ambanis in the next year’s Rich List.

In normal times, Merckle would probably have to have a lie down, nurse his wounds, and fire a lot of people. But these are crazy times, remember! So he’s asking his home state of Baden-Wurttemberg to bail him out, according to a banker who spoke with the FT yesterday.

Before you vom in anger at this apparent willlingness to blag state funds to patch up personal speculation errors, consider that he employs 100,000 people, many in Baden-Wurttemberg, and the state wouldn’t want them to lose their jobs. This news coming out is already hurting his companies – Heidelberg Cement, of which Merckle owns 80%, saw their share price drop 22% yesterday.

So if you are feeling the recession impinging upon your wealth, maybe you should give Darling a call. I know I speculated heavily on Spanish beer and cheap flights this summer, and now I’m left exposed. Help a brother out!