Good morning, dear readers,
If the thesis is correct that Donald Trump is a pathological narcissist, then today he has a day ahead of him that suits him: Finally everything revolves around him, him, him.
The fact that the news channel Fox News even broadcast live how the luggage was unloaded from the private jet that Trump had flown to New York with should correspond exactly to his ideas.
In case anyone hasn’t noticed, today the ex-president has to appear before a criminal court in Manhattan for the reading of the indictment against him. And yes, it’s the first time a former US President has been indicted.
According to law professor Barbara McQuade from the University of Michigan in the “Financial Times”, it is unlikely that Trump will be sentenced to prison for the alleged hush money payments to a porn star. Trump is much more likely to be threatened because of the parallel investigations into his alleged attempts to manipulate the 2020 presidential election.
(Photo: AP, dpa)
As our Washington correspondent Annett Meiritz analyses, Trump’s attention boost comes at a bad time, especially for Trump’s inner-party rival Ron DeSantis. Because it makes the primary campaign unpredictable – and so does the result. Trump could be in the Oval Office in two years or in a solitary cell. As of today, at least politically, the USA is actually the land of unlimited opportunity.
The traffic light and the start-ups were a complicated relationship from day one. When Economics Minister Robert Habeck presented a strategy last June to promote growth companies, Start-up Association President Christian Miele praised “the right priorities”.
But the honeymoon was over faster than Liz Taylor’s marriage. A few months later, representatives of the German start-up scene accused the federal government of endangering the future of Germany as a start-up location through inaction.
Now comes the next attempt at politics: Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner wants to strengthen start-ups with a reform of employee participation.
- According to this, a significantly higher tax allowance will apply to these companies if they have employees in the company, namely 5000 euros per capita instead of the previous 1440 euros. Lindner also wants to solve the “dry income” problem that has been much criticized in the start-up scene, in which employees have to pay tax on company shares before they can turn them into money.
- More start-ups should benefit from all the advantages in the future, and the limits for the number of employees, age and turnover of the companies will be raised.
- According to the draft law, the reform will relieve start-ups by a good 1.3 billion euros per year. It should come into force at the beginning of 2024. SPD faction vizin Verena Hubertz called the project a “breakthrough”. The head of the association, Miele, also seems reasonably satisfied: the draft law “apparently goes in the right direction”.
It doesn’t sound like amour fou, but it does sound like a tolerable pulling together.
By the way: The financial relief for the start-up scene comes at the right time, Because of the rise in interest rates and the uncertain economy, venture capital is no longer pouring into German start-ups as happily as it was in 2021.
Economic growth is slowing worldwide, only in Asia is the trend pointing in the opposite direction. This is the result of the “Asian Development Outlook” economic forecast published by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) this Tuesday.
Accordingly, the bank’s economists expect economic output in the region to increase by 4.8 percent this year – compared with an increase of 4.2 percent in the previous year.
Asia’s economic development is thus increasingly different from the rest of the world: in March, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecast that the global growth rate would fall to 2.6 percent this year – 0.6 percentage points less than in the previous year . According to the International Monetary Fund, growth in the euro zone is likely to fall from 3.5 to 0.7 percent.
Speaking of the crash: the German-Russian Forum was once the most important forum for exchange between the two countries, a kind of Atlantic bridge to the east. Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin used to attend the in-house event “Petersburg Dialogue”. The exchange ended abruptly with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A quarter of the former 500 members have turned their backs on the association, the other members are arguing bitterly about the future direction: Do you continue to seek dialogue with Russia or distance yourself? This is shown by internal documents and minutes that are available to the Handelsblatt.
EY is also facing difficult times. Two years of non-competition in the stock exchange segment – there have never been such severe sanctions by the Apas supervisory authority as against the former Wirecard auditor. In our editorial, Handelsblatt reporter Bert Fröndhoff, who had reported on the fine early on, hopes that misconduct, as in the Wirecard case, could soon be prevented by technology: “With the advent of artificial intelligence, a full audit of companies will be possible, the auditor must so no longer rely on spot checks.”
Who knows: maybe a machine would have recognized the discrepancies at Wirecard much faster than the people who – for whatever reason – didn’t succeed.
Remember the 2009 movie Up in the Air? In it, George Clooney embodies an outplacement consultant who conducts uncomfortable dismissal talks for a fee. His frequent flyer lifestyle is suddenly in jeopardy when termination calls are switched to video calling to save costs.
Experience has shown that no Hollywood comedy is too absurd and cynical not to be caught up in reality at some point: The burger maker McDonald’s has asked its administrative staff in the USA to work from Monday to Wednesday this week in the home office. According to reports from the US media, several hundred of them are to be informed there virtually of their dismissal without this making waves in the offices. Once the small McFire menu, so to speak.
I wish you a day when nobody dumps you.
Best regards
Your Christian Rickens
Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt
