In the times when not everything was better, just different, there were newspaper editions on weekends that advertised with the imposing number of pages – something three-digit. Our today’s print weekend edition with its 96 pages is a little reminiscent of this. The brackets just hold the whole thing together. “The people of the year – and who will be important in 2022” is a review by the business movers, in which actors write about actors and about this year 2021.
The year was again dominated by number tables that leave you speechless: those about Covid cases, vaccination refusals and missing doses on the one hand, exploding company profits, stock prices swaying at lofty heights and overheating deal machines on the other. In spite of all contradictions and unreasonable expectations, maintaining something like cheerfulness is performance enough. Rainer Maria Rilke never seemed more appropriate: “Who is talking about victories? Everything is surviving. “
Editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes looks into the future, into the one of the hoped-for “victory”, into a “year of new beginnings” in which we could no longer only preach changes, but actually have to live them. What must succeed here: the transformation of Sunday speeches into everyday practice.
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It could be “the beginning of the roaring twenties,” with technological breakthroughs, new growth and a fresh confidence, writes Matthes. To this end, he has put forward “22 theses for 2022” and at the end asks how well, in addition to the state and corporations, citizens themselves can change: “How many of us really do without the vacation flight in the sun for climate reasons?”
Each of us has our own heroines and heroes, many of whom are nameless people who keep the company going in a difficult situation: The nurses in the intensive care units, police officers who have to be insulted, garbage collectors, cashiers at supermarket checkouts, teachers in front of insecure children. Those portrayed in this annual edition enjoy the privilege of being on stage on behalf of everyone who achieves enormous things for the economy and society.
2022 could be “the beginning of the golden twenties”, writes Handelsblatt editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes in the current weekend edition.
Some examples. Entrepreneur Arndt Kirchhoff honors VW boss Herbert Diess as “Transformer of the Year”that he is “a manager who boldly and boldly throws himself into public discourse” (and continues with scratches).
Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing honors Jens Weidmann, still president of the Bundesbank, as “adherent to principles”, as someone to whom one must be grateful that he was the spokesman for the opposition to an open-lock monetary policy and that he “also accepted the bogeyman role”.
Özlem Türeci and Ugur Sahin appear as “Family Business Owners of the Year”, lauded by Merck boss Belén Garijo: The Biontech founders “brought a lot of light into the world with their work”.
And, last example: Anna Herrhausen writes about the rainbow colors, the “Campaign of the Year” in football summer to show solidarity with the LGBTQI community. Their conclusion: the European values are tangible, they can be defined, “and we can always dare to enforce them.”
Yesterday evening at “Maybrit Illner”, the new head of the CDU appeared, and everyone in the discussion was very sure: Friedrich Merz, 66, candidate in the third attempt. It could even well be that the economist who has returned from Blackrock to political circles will be announced as future number one this early afternoon. Almost two thirds of the approximately 400,000 CDU members took part in the survey about the next party leader. Merz needs that absolute majority in this round, which for rivals Norbert Röttgen and especially Helge Braun currently seems as far away as Helgoland from the tower of Hamburg’s Michel.
The new chairman is called upon in many ways, says party grandee Volker Bouffier, the CDU must reorganize itself as the opposition in the federal government and want to become the strongest party again: “It will not be a walk in the park.” According to rumors, parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus is currently doing everything to To prevent Merz loyalists in important positions: In the event of a Merz election, he must fear for his post.
There was a neighborhood dispute yesterday in the Bundestag: AfD MP Stephan Brandner announced that he no longer wanted to sit next to the “green left submissive Postengrapscher troupe” and the “blasé types from the FDP”. The so vilified liberals then provided the necessary majority for a new seating arrangement: For the first time in more than 70 years, the FDP is no longer sitting on the right edge of the plenary chamber (as seen from the Bureau), where they were once placed because of their strong National Liberal wing.
Now the Union is sitting on the right with the dirty children of the AfD – and sulking. Christian Democrat Thorsten Frei sees an “expression of disrespect”. Everyone wants to be in the middle, the FDP symbolizes it.
The discovery of slowness is celebrated as a virtue in the European Central Bank (ECB), but criticized as a flaw by the rest of the world. After the US Federal Reserve announced three interest rate hikes for 2022 and the Bank of England raised the key rate from 0.1 to 0.25 percent, the ECB nevertheless stuck to the zero-point-zero solution. ECB President Christine Lagarde only announced that the bond purchase program PEPP, which was used in the pandemic, would expire at the end of March. “Mission accomplished,” she said.
However, the anti-inflation mission is far from being fulfilled. In view of the 4.9 percent price increase, not only the banking association finds that the overall package presented does not fit the changed price environment. Because the older APP bond purchase program is being increased, so an interest rate hike is de facto ruled out for 2022. The German representatives in the Governing Council, Jens Weidmann and Isabel Schnabel, would have preferred – along with a few others – not to commit so long. Arthur Schopenhauer comes to mind: “The money is like lake water – the more you have drunk, the thirstier you get.”
My cultural tip for the weekend: “The lovebirds” by Simone de Beauvoir, first novel by the writer, once rejected as too private by Jean-Paul Sartre and now, 35 years after her death, approved by her stepdaughter.
The intense relationship between the author and the highly gifted, cheerful school friend Zaza is portrayed in a semi-fictional manner. This failed with her will for freedom because of the Catholic constraints of an upper-class family in inter-war France, felt herself to be a sinner and died young of encephalitis. “Cornered” is the key phrase of this literary discovery, which is used to better understand Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialism and feminism.
And then there is the insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé, who in the Wirecard case has a good chance of having the allegedly falsified balance sheets of the defunct DAX group annulled for 2017 and 2018. It’s as if the jugglers’ ghost never existed: not the sloppy work of the EY auditors, not the taxes paid to the tax office on the basis of manipulated figures, not even the dividends distributed.
In the event of a corresponding judgment by the Munich I Regional Court, Jaffé could claim back all these sums. Judge Helmut Krenek now said at the hearing: “If this business did not exist and the balance sheets are not correct, then the annual financial statements are void.” . A couple of mask deals, for example.
I wish you a peaceful weekend in the light of the four Advent candles.
I warmly greet you
Her
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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