To err is human, but at the head of the European Central Bank (ECB) it is completely inappropriate. There, President Christine Lagarde played down the risk of inflation for a long time.
Perhaps the group in the ECB tower will also take a look at a new inflation indicator that the Handelsblatt has developed together with the Technical University of Dortmund. Based on millions of newspaper articles, the “I-Index” is a kind of inflation early warning system that reflects the expected and perceived inflation among the population.
“Vox populi” is currently showing: Rising prices are becoming a permanent phenomenon, the Ukraine war is acting as an inflation booster and a wage-price spiral is likely. It hasn’t played a role since 2000, but there hasn’t been a raw material squeeze either
(Photo: AP)
If we have already mentioned the elite university Princeton, a current report should not be missing in the context. We have learned that nine months ago Princeton offered both former Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband, the quantum chemist Joachim Sauer, guest professorships. Since then, the Christian Democrat has apparently been “pregnant” with the idea, an acceptance or rejection is still pending.
Universities have awarded the politician an honorary doctorate 18 times, for example Harvard in the USA and most recently Johns Hopkins University in the summer of 2021. Merkel said about her plans as a pensioner: “And then maybe I’ll try to read something, then my eyes will close because I’m tired, then I’ll sleep a bit and then we’ll see.”
Perhaps Merkel will reply to the US university with a text passage from the Beatles song “I’m only sleeping”, which is legendary for idlers: “Please don’t wake me / No don’t shake me / Leave me where I am / I’m only sleeping.”
(Photo: dpa, Handelsblatt)
Investors woke up yesterday – and turned the stock market into a cabinet of curiosities. Indications from the Ukrainian side that they were ready to talk about a neutrality status at today’s meeting in Turkey’s Antalya with Russia’s foreign ministry were interpreted by the financial augurs as a call to buy! Buy!
At the end of this “relief rally”, the German stock index, which had been beaten down, had gained 7.9 percent, the Dow Jones on Wall Street two percent, and the Nasdaq technology stock index there 3.6 percent. In the end, everyone sang Katja Ebstein’s “Wonders always happen”. And yet they suspect: Tomorrow it could be a “blue miracle” that they experience.
Antalya could be a place of feints in a war in which Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin has long since qualified for a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. According to Ukrainian sources, his soldiers bombed a children’s hospital in Mariupol yesterday. 1,200 civilians died in the port town within nine days. Russia also confirmed that it would use aerosol weapons. This information cannot be independently verified. Meanwhile, Ukraine is showing disappointment in Germany because…
- it does not force the attacked country to join the EU,
- does not agree to the dispatch of Polish MiG-29 fighter jets from Ramstein to the war zone, which the USA and NATO have not yet thought of either,
- and so far – unlike the USA – has rejected a total boycott of gas, oil and coal from Russia.
It is opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) who calls for the immediate stop of gas deliveries via Nord Stream 1: “We don’t want to wait.” The mineral oil tax must fall just like the value added tax. So far, however, the federal government has been content with lengthy explanations as to why Russian gas has to flow.
Conclusion: No sign of an emergency plan.
It is currently not known which will come first: giving in in Kyiv in the face of the Russian superiority bristling with arms or the state bankruptcy of the aggressor Russian Federation. As the last rating agency, Fitch lowered its thumb – and considers a default by the war country to be “imminent”. First came the sanctions, then the rumors of bankruptcy.
Russian bond prices have plummeted, the value of the ruble is declining, central bank reserves are partially frozen and the cost of hedging a default (“default”) is skyrocketing. The creditworthiness of the debtor country Russia is roughly where the dustbins of the international financial markets are.
In the midst of these bouts of weakness, President Vladimir Putin wants to demonstrate the strengths of his machismo capitalism. He threatens German companies that have demonstratively left the country with the expropriation of their factories, machines and land. A new package of laws allows this makeshift legal measure against companies from “unfriendly countries”.
Companies like VW, Mercedes and McDonald’s are threatened if they don’t resume operations or sell their shares after five days. With Putin’s great power fantasies, Bolshevism has returned. For Winston Churchill, this was not a political direction, but just an illness: “He is not a creation, he is a pestilence.”
Part of the art of a spin doctor common in the business is simply to drown out bad news with good news. This is how it works at Amazon from Jeff Bezos, the world department store monopolist from the USA with connected amusement streaming services and cloud businesses.
The bad news is that a US Congressional committee is asking the Justice Department to investigate whether the company and some of its executives misled lawmakers (which Amazon denies).
The good news is that last night the board of directors decided to split the shares: for every old security there should be 20 new ones. This hasn’t happened since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. In addition, Amazon wants to buy back its own shares for ten billion dollars, which immediately caused the price to rise by seven percent in after-hours trading.
(Photo: Adobe Stock)
And then there are the Michelin Guide gastronomy stars that have just been awarded, to serve something nice with dessert. Anyone who lives in Munich probably thinks it’s completely normal and deserves that three new two-star chefs are active on the Isar.
Just a few months after picking up the wooden spoon, Tohru Nakamura (“Schreiberei”), Benjamin Chmura (“Tantris”) and Anton Gschwendtner (“Atelier”) were successful. With Sigi Schelling from the “Werneckhof”, another woman finally made it into the one-star class.
The testers awarded three stars a total of three times. The rise of Thomas Schanz from the restaurant of the same name in the Moselle town of Piesport is striking. The 42-year-old managed to get the third star with his own family business, without any sponsor or patron. The only praline left is the Renaissance poet Giovanni Boccaccio: “It is better to enjoy and regret than to regret not having enjoyed.”
I wish you a real pleasure day.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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