Good morning dear readers,
If you want to know how the state of mind of mankind is at the moment, you should drive to the Nevada desert. There, in the pompous city of Las Vegas, the world’s largest technology trade fair CES is taking place. The ultimate in the industry meets here to find out about new trends and make even more money with current needs.
The astonishing thing is that while until recently it was still about how customers could be sold even more fun games with the help of “gadgets”, the companies are now primarily concerned with solving existential problems. At least that’s what our tech reporter from Silicon Valley, Stephan Scheuer, observes.
But the transformation of the CES to the supposed world rescue fair does not bode well. And at the same time raises the question of what fundamental problems of our time technology can solve at all.
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Technology rules the world – and could do a lot.
A question our reporters tackled in today’s weekend title. They identify seven challenges for which new inventions could provide a solution.
These include intelligent devices designed to help stabilize supply chains. Company managers could be informed live about what is currently happening with their goods. The refrigerated container on the truck can therefore quickly sound the alarm and say: “Hello hello, my door is open.”
Hopes for little technological helpers are high, especially to combat the climate crisis. For example, new batteries could store energy from wind and sun. Technology should also be used more extensively in military defense – namely “made in Germany”. Because Germany can no longer rely on solutions from other great powers. The idea: Sensors from tanks, drones and satellites, for example, could be networked in order to receive a digital real-time situation report.
However, my personal favorite of the problem-solving technologies is Horst 600. Horst is a robot that can produce around 30,000 hydraulic valves per year and thus offers a foretaste of how the shortage of skilled workers could be solved technically. My hope: Maybe Horst would like to vacuum my house or hang up the laundry after work.
One job I personally find very fascinating is being a stock market skeptic. A job in which curious sentences are often said, such as “God, the curve doesn’t look good at all” or “When I look at this share, I get scared and anxious again”.
These same skeptics are currently warning against false euphoria on the financial market. Her main point: Investors suffer from a loss of reality. The managing director of wealth manager Sentix, Patrick Hussy, predicts: “The recession will last longer and be more severe than many investors assume.”
He expects profits to collapse in the corporate sector, inflation to remain high and interest rate hikes to exceed current expectations. “So the shares are being squeezed from two sides,” he fears.
The analyst even suspects a “sell-off in October” for the German share index, which has actually only known the upswing since the financial crisis in 2008, and considers a crash to 10,000 points possible. That would be a loss of more than 30 percent.
My Berlin colleagues from the politics department are also conducting a detailed analysis of the impact of the current crisis. You ask yourself the question: How expensive has the crisis cost Germany so far?
The great spending mood that experts expected after the corona crisis did not materialize for the time being because of the ensuing crises. The result: instead of caught-up growth, Germany is probably expecting a recession.
The big problem: A lot of money has flowed abroad for energy imports in recent months – capital that is irretrievably lost for the German economy. Handelsblatt chief economist Bert Rürup is therefore calling for a clear growth strategy for the coming years from the federal government.
Parallels between the current situation and the oil price crisis from 1979 to 1981 do not give cause for great optimism. At that time, the overall economic losses could only be compensated for five years later, in 1986. So let’s hope for the years after 2028.
(Photo: imago images/Chris Emil Janssen)
Only a few more weeks, then Europe can count on warmer temperatures. While the Germans are looking forward to ice cream and falling gas bills, for Ukraine the spring probably means a further intensification of hostilities from the Russian side.
Preparations for this have long since begun and Germany has now decided to support the Ukrainian defense more than before with the help of Marder armored personnel carriers and Patriot anti-missile missiles.
In addition, Chancellor Olaf Scholz phoned American President Joe Biden yesterday evening German time, who also wants to supply more weapons. Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) stressed that Ukraine has the right to defend itself against the Russian attack and Germany has a duty to help it do so.
In the end, all that remains is the almost traditional look at the constant re-elections in the House of Representatives in the USA. During the night, Kevin McCarthy completed the eleven failed ballots, and there is no end in sight to the procedure.
Meanwhile, the mockery grows. As a precaution, social media has pointed out that the constitution does not prohibit electing a cat as speaker. One sighs and thinks that even electing a cat might now be a legitimate way to finally unblock American democracy.
In the coming week, my colleague Christian Rickens will welcome you again at this point.
I wish you a good start to the day – without a cat hair allergy.
It greets you cordially
Her
Teresa Stiens
Editor of the Handelsblatt
