If the namesake Kaspar, Melchior and Balthasar got lost today at the digital Epiphany meeting of the FDP, there would be little doubt to whom they would deliver gold, myrrh and incense: Christian Lindner. With the return to the government, the upper liberal “delivered his masterpiece”, analyzes Handelsblatt chief of politics Thomas Sigmund in our leading article: “He now belongs in the front row with the FDP grandees Walter Scheel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher.”
Indeed, seldom has a German party owed so much to a single politician as the FDP Christian Lindner. But at the same time, the party is still traumatized by its former failure in government responsibility: Between 2009 and 2013, the federal FDP governed itself directly from the cabinet room into the extra-parliamentary opposition. “The liberals have to deliver now,” says Thomas Sigmund, and compares the party’s role in the traffic light coalition with the gold share in the portfolio: “Gold is a defensive value that you want to use to arm yourself against risks. The classic FDP voters want compliance with the debt brake, no higher taxes and no experiments with the EU debt rules. ”
But: “It also needs a few growth values.” With digitization, education and infrastructure, the FDP now has to prove that it can also shape. In other words: Whether Lindner really belongs in the Genscher and Scheel category has to be seen in the next federal election. Otherwise the three kings will take their myrrh with them again.
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Where we are currently with the right portfolio structure: This is currently also controversial among investment professionals. The stock exchanges are rushing from record to record, many companies are valued enormously high – and at the same time there is increasing uncertainty as to whether the announced monetary policy turnaround by the central banks will proceed smoothly.
The Handelsblatt asked three well-known fund managers how they steer through this phase. Sonja Laud, Klaus Kaldemorgen and Bert Flossbach manage so-called mixed funds. You can pack pretty much anything into your portfolio that brings long-term returns. Despite this largely identical approach, the equity component in their respective funds ranges from 48 percent (Laud) to 82 percent (Flossbach). Conclusion: Private investors would probably do well to locate the proportion of shares or equity funds in their own savings somewhere between these two values.
How uncertain the interest rate and thus also the stock market development actually is in the year that has just started was shown yesterday evening: Then the US Federal Reserve published minutes of its meetings, from which it emerged that, in view of the high inflation rates, interest rate hikes could be necessary “sooner or at a faster pace” than previously assumed – and the US stock markets promptly shot into the red. Measured against the current mood on the stock exchange, electric eels are relaxed beings.
(Photo: imago images / Reiner Zensen)
The damned Omicron variant, of which we still don’t really know how dangerous it actually is, doesn’t exactly make economic forecasts more accurate. What makes you confident: A certain pragmatism seems to have returned to German corona policy. The Corona rules are still difficult to understand, but for the most part they seem moderate, at least for the boosted. The immediate lockdown group is no longer as trigger-happy as it was a few weeks ago.
This can also be seen in the draft resolution for the federal-state meeting on Friday: The outlined shortening of the quarantine periods is so complicated that you should already have a large part of the isolation time behind you just by understanding the rules. But overall, the proposal of the federal and state health ministers appears to be the right step so that half the republic is not soon quarantined because of Omikron.
And then there is the French President Emmanuel Macron, who linguistically goes his own way in the Corona debate – and thus triggered a discussion among Germany’s Francophones yesterday (to which I unfortunately only count a très petit peu). He wanted the unvaccinated “emmerder” announced Macron, and well, how is this verb to be translated correctly? “Nerves” is too weak, and we cannot reproduce all the other variants here without possibly spoiling your appetite for breakfast rolls. As a little revenge, my colleague Thorsten Knuf from the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” recommended that all French people who know German should try the French translation of the German terms “Frostköttel” and “hinterfotzig”. Bonne chance!
I wish you a day on which no one will abandon you … whatever that means.
Best regards
Her
Christian Rickens
Head of Text Handelsblatt
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