against the walking wretch Donald Trump, 75, Joe Biden, 79, is of course a pleasantly civilized personality. Unfortunately, a year after the inauguration, his greatest disadvantage became apparent: he didn’t push anything through. Now the US President is suffering two defeats in one fell swoop.
- For one thing, his plan to change the old filibuster rule in the Senate, according to which 60 out of 100 votes are required to pass a law, threatens to fail. But Senator Kyrsten Sinema, acting for Arizona, from her own Democratic Party, refuses to support her. This dissolves Biden’s wafer-thin majority in the Senate.
- The Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, is temporarily stopping the vaccination and testing requirements for larger companies decreed by the President. 80 million workers would have been affected – but with the administrative regulation, Biden’s authorities would probably exceed their competencies, according to the judges. The mask requirement planned by the White House is now “on hold”.
- In terms of economic policy, seven percent inflation is Biden’s burden, which worries Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller in an interview with the Handelsblatt: “People talk a lot about inflation – and that alone is a great danger.” He considers shares to be extremely overvalued and believes “that markets could drop between a third and 50 percent.” And finally, Shiller is certain that Biden has far too weak a mandate to implement the idea of a welfare state.
USA 2022: “Biden bashing” is becoming popular, and at the Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago Trump is giving audience after audience.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Critical minds ask where the next bubble will burst. Our weekend report is about the “unicorn bubble”. – from the hype surrounding start-ups that are worth at least a billion dollars, from the hope of new stars like Celonis, from the greed of investors and the fear of the elderly that the boom could end like the dot-com crash of 2000.
In 2021 alone, 17.4 billion euros in venture capital was invested in new German companies, more than in the previous three years combined. My colleague Larissa Holzki describes that valuations are rising because there is a lack of returns elsewhere. She tells of a risk manager who is just planning a fintech and has already been “coldly” written to by half a dozen financiers. With so much fairytale world, we turn to fantasy literature and popular sayings about mythical characters: “My unicorn says: Reality lies.” And sometimes it pinches me too.
For some time now, the fabulous stock market world has included that corporations invest the money they have earned in buying back their own shares in order to maintain their prices. We’ll just make the boom ourselves! According to our calculations, the Dax companies – Allianz and Adidas stand out here – want to spend around 16.7 billion euros on the cosmetic surgery.
Only in the record year of 2008 was it more, at 16.9 billion euros, but then came the financial crisis. And that is also the disadvantage of the we-love-ourselves-strategy: When markets and stock exchanges rush, the balance sheet of the share buybacks is weakened, financial distress spreads. The sovereign wealth fund from Abu Dhabi then got involved with Daimler in 2009.
Gone are the days when the European Central Bank (ECB) was a “European Federal Bank”. This shows the fate of the famous debt ratio that all countries in the euro area should achieve. But instead of 60 percent, as stipulated, it is currently 100 percent on average. “Rules that cannot be observed politically do more harm than protection,” notes Handelsblatt professor Bert Rürup in his column “Der Chefökonom”.
He recalls that the ominous 60 percent in the early 1990s was the arithmetic mean of the states involved, plus a hefty premium. But when the rule was to come to fruition, other conditions applied and it was watered down by Germany of all places in 2003. Since Brüning’s austerity plans will not bear fruit in the future, everyone sees the pragmatic renewal course of a southern Prime Minister as a role model, who already defied the anti-euro speculators at the ECB with a Prussian spiked helmet: Mario Draghi, currently in Rome.
(Photo: Bahlsen)
Family business succession is one of the most difficult exercises in hidden champions wonderland. At the biscuit manufacturer Bahlsen (sales: 540 million euros) in Hanover, the solution found crumbles after just 24 months. Phil Rumbol, the first non-family boss in 133 years, says “goodbye” – not without being praised by patriarch Werner Bahlsen, 72, for setting “important milestones”. The chairman of the board has previously stated that none of the four children will become operational CEOs.
After all, Verena Bahlsen, 28, is an “active partner” on the board. She will also work closely with the future boss. Bahlsen has lost air sovereignty for conference biscuits and coffee parties because of Corona, an expert blasphemes. The group is looking for real innovation in Berlin, for example with a test restaurant and a start-up cooperation for sustainable food inventions. Verena Bahlsen’s title says it all: “Chief Mission Officer”.
My cultural tip for the weekend: “Vigil” by Tom Edge, a six-part TV series on Arte, previously very successful on the BBC. Unlike some streaming events, the drama surrounding the deaths of a British nuclear submarine in Scottish waters is told in a stringent and exciting way. The series heroine, a claustrophobic police inspector (famous: Suranne Jones), takes on the Royal Navy and the secret service MI5.
How it works when it comes to the topic of “state within the state”: the investigation of a murder suddenly becomes classified information and thus a special challenge for criminal intuition coupled with girl power. Similarities with incidents on the submarine “HMS Vigilant” and the loss of the fishing trawler “Antares” are neither accidental nor unintentional.
And then there’s cannabis, which researchers at Oregon State University have identified as helping in the anti-coronavirus fight. After that, two specific hemp compounds prevented Sars-CoV-2 from spreading in the human body. The lead researcher says both substances don’t make you feel “high”; there would be a “good safety profile”.
Stoners, however, have no reason to celebrate: the cannabinoid acids in question must not be smoked because they are very sensitive to heat. The hash cigarette is not suitable for a joint venture against Covid.
And anyway, we remember George W. Bush, who would never answer questions about marijuana: “Because I don’t want little kids to try what I used to try.”
I wish you a relaxing weekend.
Best regards
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
You can subscribe to the Morning Briefing here: