do you know the balloon policy? Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder once pursued them: he put some big plan to important media and in the end evaluated how it was received by the voters.
At the same time, according to the newspaper “Welt”, Habeck pointed out legal hurdles and possible lawsuits. Then there could be a threat of gas supply collapse. Only Klaus Müller, head of the Federal Network Agency, fiercely defends the gas surcharge: It is “more accurate than its reputation”. According to Müller, only a small part of the gas surcharge of a good 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour goes to companies that do not really need it.
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The People’s Republic of China, a hybrid of cadre socialism and innovative capitalism, is gradually getting into the same difficulties as its most important trading partner, Europe. After lockdowns and the construction crisis, drought and record heat hit the country – the extreme weather conditions trigger power shortages. China’s government approved a program worth more than 300 billion yuan (around 44 billion euros) to expand infrastructure. Special bonds worth 200 billion yuan are intended to stabilize the energy supply.
But the nice tone has long since been thwarted by the closure of a number of factories, such as Toyota, CATL and Foxconn in Sichuan province. The power shortage there could easily spread to companies like carmakers Porsche and Volkswagen. Uncertainty is currently the biggest enemy of growth.
But how does the loyal trading partner Germany intend to proceed in this tricky situation? First by unloading arrogance and prejudices, but above all with stricter rules for state guarantees for investments by German companies abroad. “We have to do something to prevent the cluster risk in China from continuing to build up,” reveals a senior representative of Robert Habeck’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. The threat of sanctions if the conflict with Beijing escalates also plays a role.
Lessing already knew: “The slowest, who does not lose sight of his goal, still walks faster than those who wander around without a goal.”
One who wants to lead the way is China’s President Xi Jinping. He wants to spend another 146 billion US dollars for support measures and investments – which should help to keep the economy “on a steady course”, according to Premier Li Keqiang.
On the other hand, Ren Zhengfei, 77, founder of the successful IT group Huawei, strikes an unusually gloomy tone. In a rumored letter to employees, he predicts a protracted global recession and a “painful historic decade.” As the global economy shrinks, so does market pressure on Huawei. The telecom equipment supplier and hardware manufacturer will probably give up some countries completely. For the years 2023 to 2025 in particular, it is all about survival, according to the founder. It must be ensured that Huawei “survives the crisis in the next three years”. In this tone it goes on. The “cold” is passed on to everyone, Ren writes, for example, given the dramatic situation, the employees should shiver: “No more illusions, no more storytelling.”
The more the interest rates thanked, the more the Germans sought “concrete gold”. They invested, even at top prices, in real estate, a supposed major investment port. But the frenzy of the last decade was over, when ramshackle, dilapidated houses in unattractive neighborhoods were in demand, as if gold nuggets were lying around freely. The average price for home ownership had recently climbed to 538,000 euros, an increase of 85 percent within a decade.
“Where recently people bought almost blindly, now the nervousness is increasing,” describes our weekend title. And those who are nervous have good reasons for their trembling hands: Sometimes there is a lack of craftsmen, then earlier subsidies again, sometimes the increasing construction costs and material shortages are annoying, sometimes the declining public subsidies have a disadvantageous effect. Anyone who now has to sell a house quickly looks down the drainpipe.
Part of the much-cited “turning point” is that many things will first get worse before some things maybe get better. This can be seen in the rising CO2 emissions, in the forced run on oil, coal and gas. There are also worrying developments in organic food. More and more providers are giving up because the clientele, worried about inflation, is also saving here. After all, the vacations that are still planned need to be financed.
For example, the following have recently given up: Nicola Baumgartner with her Shuyao tea culture, the Bacher health food store chain with 100 branches and the supermarket chain Superbiomarkt. According to figures from GfK, sales in health food stores and health food stores fell by 39.1 percent in the first half of the year, and organic supermarkets lost 16.5 percent. Sustainability is no longer a trend when it affects the wallet.
My cultural tip for the weekend is book number two on our shortlist for the German Business Book Prize 2022: “A Brief History of Equality” by Thomas Piketty. It is a “best of” the previous work of the French economist, for whom the wealth of a few is growing faster than the gross domestic product. Here he concedes that society has become more “egalitarian” in the last 200 years, but has not yet reached its goal – and for him that is a democratic, decentralized socialism. Piketty calls for a welfare state and progressive tax rates, but is too naïve when it comes to the question of what a state can actually achieve. Piketty’s historical excursions, such as slavery, women’s rights, education and Thatcherism, are worth reading.
And then there is Katerina Tikhonova, the younger daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who seems to like Bavaria. According to research by “Spiegel” and the Russian investigative platform “IStories”, she has apparently flown to Germany more than twenty times since 2015, all for love. Her partner Igor Zelensky, presumably also the father of a four-year-old daughter, worked until April as head of the Bavarian State Ballet.
The German security authorities were not aware of the explosive visits, although Putin’s daughter was accompanied by bodyguards from the Russian Presidential Guard FSO. Apparently, the police and intelligence services did not notice these tours for years – although Tikhonowa and her bodyguards mostly came to Bavaria under their real names. For the SPD interior expert and member of the Bundestag Sebastian Fiedler, the case is “an illustrious example” of “that we have not developed any strategies over the past decades to counter the Russian agents and their activities”. The clear diagnosis: “We can’t go on like this.”
In view of such insights, we want to end with a classic by Mark Twain: “When God created man, he was already tired; that explains a lot.”
Have a relaxing weekend, sleep in.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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