Many reactions to the traffic light coalition’s relief package are reminiscent of the desperation pedagogy that is allegedly practiced in relevant troubled schools: Everyone showed up for the exam on time, nobody handed in a blank sheet of paper and during the break there were no fights or drugs. In the eyes of many journalist colleagues, that’s apparently enough for a secure transfer. “A remarkable package,” states the “Spiegel”. “The new relief package shows that the coalition is capable of action,” praises the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
The best example is a lump sum of 300 euros for every pensioner – just as if this population group still consisted of former wreckage women who gnaw on margarine bread. In fact, seniors are a very large group of voters, which is probably why they should not go away empty-handed from this relief package.
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And actually I’m the only one who finds it strange that in this country you can be considered “higher earners” and as such have to pay the top tax rate, but at the same time the state finds you so needy that you need 18 euros extra child benefit a month? Of course, the former can lead to the latter in the long run.
For me, a bourgeois society means that everyone who is financially able to do so should first of all make provisions themselves for imponderables such as rising energy prices – by investing or liquidating savings for such cases. The state still has enough to do with helping everyone who, for whatever reason, cannot. The increase in the Hartz IV rate from 449 to 500 euros is a step in the right direction for giving out praise.
But soon there will soon be no more money left for such targeted help if the state continues to try to exempt citizens well into the middle class from all life risks in a fully comprehensive manner. Or as my colleague Thomas Sigmund aptly quotes an old hit in his editorial: “Who is going to pay for that, who has so much money?”
The fight against high energy prices is likely to continue next Friday, this time at European level: the EU energy ministers want to discuss price caps for natural gas and aid loans for distressed energy companies at their meeting. The Reuters news agency quoted from a corresponding document. In addition, a temporary suspension of the derivatives market for energy is to be discussed.
Observers assume that Liz Truss will replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in Great Britain.
(Photo: Reuters)
Great Britain is also having trouble with rising energy prices. There, on Monday afternoon, it will be announced who has won the membership vote to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party – and will thus almost automatically become the new British Prime Minister. All observers are counting on Secretary of State Liz Truss. A prime minister with populist tendencies would then put the handle and house cat of Downing Street Number Ten in the hands of an equally gifted successor. Our London correspondent Torsten Riecke analyzes how Truss intends to tackle the huge problems in the United Kingdom.
One special feature is already clear: Johnson and Truss have to travel a little further this time to make their obligatory inaugural or farewell visit to Elizabeth II. The Queen is staying at Scotland’s Balmoral Castle instead of London’s Buckingham Palace. If you’ve already retired from Winston Churchill, you really don’t have to interrupt your summer vacation for every little thing.
The carmaker Volkswagen wants to get things done with the IPO of Porsche AG at the beginning of the new week.
(Photo: dpa)
Also today, Monday, the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen want to discuss their very own relief package: The IPO of the subsidiary Porsche AG, which will bring in at least 60 billion euros and should take place at the end of September at the earliest, as our reporters Stefan Menzel and Arno Schütze found out. What is probably the largest German IPO of the year will also be something for gourmets from the point of view of corporate governance: Volkswagen wants to quickly sell a blocking minority in Porsche AG to the family holding company Porsche SE, while the external Porsche shareholders should be content with non-voting preferred shares .
Note: Shareholder democracy is a fine thing, as long as you keep to yourself.
And then there is the double monument that has adorned the Münchner Freiheit in the heart of Schwabing since the weekend. Helmut Dietl, the director, and Helmut Fischer, the actor, are now sitting together again at the coffee house table. Together they gave us, in addition to other tributes to the Munich attitude to life, the “Monaco Franze”: that long drink of easygoingness and melancholy that always looked a bit more elegant in Dietl’s film than in reality.
I myself have just arrived in Munich, where I have the privilege of attending the Handelsblatt Media Group’s Summer Camp, a two-day event on the topics of innovation and collaboration. More on that tomorrow at this point.
If time permits, I will make a short detour to the Münchner Freiheit and pay homage to the two Helmuts.
I wish you a day on which, as always, a little something works.
Best regards
Her
Christian Rickens
Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt
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