one cannot claim that “Helge-haste-mal-ne-idea” as a possible new CDU chief has immediately forced itself into the nation’s consciousness. The minister of the Chancellery who came over late at night at Angela Merkel’s request with the idea of an “Easter rest”, which, viewed in the light of day, had to be cashed in again immediately. But now it could actually be so far: Hesse’s CDU board is holding a special meeting on Friday, and many board members want Helge Braun to be the Christian Democratic head.
The doctor from Gießen does not rule out a candidacy internally. The election is about “a reconciliation of leadership and grassroots”, he said in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”, which is now known to be a “Frankfurter Allgemeine Saturday newspaper”. After AKK and Armin Laschet, Braun would be a further contest of the “Merkelians” to prevent a suspected legal drift among recurring applicant Friedrich Merz. The Sauerland with a house on Tegernsee is currently best sorted in the CDU power struggle, also through his pact with middle-class representative Carsten Linnemann.
Suddenly the topic of 2G or 3G – or vaccination light in the workplace – has become very vivid. Understandable for everyone. This is due to the prominent workplace, the German Football Association (DFB) and FC Bayern Munich, and of course the even more prominent players. And all because after traveling to the international match it became clear that Bayern player Niklas Süle had corona despite double vaccination – and four apparently unvaccinated FCB stars who had traveled with him had to be quarantined on official instructions.
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These are vaccination skeptics Joshua Kimmich as well as Serge Gnabry, Karim Adeyemi and Jamal Musiala. The question of continued salary payment in the event of illness arises almost automatically, because since the beginning of the month unvaccinated people with Corona have no longer been entitled to compensation in the event of loss of earnings. The employer decides. So it is up to FC Bayern whether he pays Joshua Kimmich, the service provider who is now unable to perform, a six-figure sum for seven days.
There must be a lot of trouble when Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) is disheveled in “Bild”, which under the old editor-in-chief, who was almost submissive to him, was still his belly and stomach. But now the tabloid – “big tones, bad numbers” – like other papers cannot ignore the bad corona values of the former candidate for chancellor: third highest incidence with 348 after Saxony and Thuringia, lowest vaccination rate among those over sixty at risk at 83 , 2 percent, only 65 percent vaccinated at all, worst figure for free intensive care beds with 8.7 percent.
Bavaria is now in the 2G mode, but after pressure from government partner Free Voters, Söder had to allow exceptions for under-18s until the end of the year. The renewed attempt by the CSU boss to win voters’ favor through demonstrative corona severity is atomized in view of this failure record. So his initiative for a rapid pandemic summit among the prime ministers fizzled out very quickly.
The incidence figures in Germany are now worse than in the previous year – but nobody wants to experience the mechanisms from back then, this associated withering of society, the energy of which ended in the echo room of insults and rabble. Virologist Christian Drosten already sees the country in a “social emergency” and expects – everything as usual – new “shutdown measures” for the winter.
His mantra: “We have to control the infection activity again by means of contact measures.” We were on a completely different path, only temporarily forgetting the “boosting” for everyone, the third vaccination, and not really convinced enough about vaccination. Should Helge Braun have an idea?
In France, President Emmanuel Macron is pushing ahead on this matter. From December onwards there will also be a booster vaccination for 50-year-olds. And anyone aged 65 or over is now only considered vaccinated if they can prove they have had the third booster vaccination. After the general “pass sanitaire”, which gives vaccinated people exclusive free access to events and the like, Macron is now making the next drastic attempt in the anti-virus fight. “Get vaccinated. Make an appointment now, ”he asked in his TV address on Tuesday evening. We don’t know at the moment who should go to the TV studio for such an appeal: Angela Merkel or Olaf Scholz?
What could not have come off the assembly line and roll into the car dealerships – if only it weren’t for this chip crisis! Only 80 million vehicles will be built worldwide in 2021 instead of 90 million. At our current car summit, Reinhard Ploss gives little courage that the disturbance will soon go away.
As the head of the semiconductor company Infineon, he should know: “The supply chain is completely empty. The bottlenecks will clearly extend into 2022. ”And Ploss jokes:“ Just in time sometimes means just not. ”The efficiency-driven just-in-time production that has shifted storage to truck traffic jams on the freeways , is now the accelerator for failures.
The German carmakers are coping visibly better with the calamities: They report thickened figures quarter by quarter. Reason: You simply reserve the smaller number of chips for your profitable cars, then in the end the total surplus increases despite reduced sales figures. Let’s put it this way: You have to wait much shorter for the margin miracle SUV than for a Golf, the former Volksauto. As a sign of strength, VW even wants to build a new factory for e-cars at its headquarters in Wolfsburg: the “Trinity” project.
On the other hand, auto suppliers, who cannot escape the crisis so elegantly, are hit hard. They suffer from the in toto declining production, cannot pass on rising chip and raw material prices to customers and e-mobility is certainly not a solution: “Electric vehicles need even more chips than normal vehicles,” says Continental boss Nikolai Setzer.
In health terms, Sars-Cov-2 – first located in China – is the virus that threatens the countries of the world. Bad credit is the fearful virus in the economy, and the People’s Republic plays a key role here too. After the company Evergrande, Kaisa is now the next real estate company on the brink of collapse to fight bankruptcy.
Investors and creditors had to be asked to “give more time and patience”. The US Federal Reserve under Jerome Powell has little patience and leaves out diplomatic formulas in the semi-annual stability report: Financial tensions in China could put a strain on global financial markets, pose risks to global economic growth “and affect the United States,” the report says.
And then there is the city of Mainz, seat of the bishop and the Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister, carnival stronghold, but not: “Mainz remains Mainz”. Because the beautiful spot on the Rhine also has a gold mine. In any case, that’s the address of the vaccination and stock market shooting star Biontech, who brought in a pretax profit of a fabulous 10.3 billion euros in the first nine months of 2021, with sales only three billion higher.
For Mainz – and now it’s coming – an additional one billion euros in trade tax should drop in 2021. And so, Simsalabim, a budget deficit turns into a surplus of 1.09 billion. The Lord Mayor wants to expand the municipality into a biotech hub in the future, of course also for Biontech – and to lower the business tax assessment rate from 440 to 310.
Conclusion: The man can afford it and may have read Albert Schweitzer: “Happiness is the only thing that doubles when you share it.”
I wish you a happy day, what else.
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you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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