Showdown between Macron and Le Pen

The right-wing populist wants to terminate the armaments cooperation with Germany, she accuses Macron of “blindness towards Berlin” and promises more “purchasing power” for everyone. The President, on the other hand, spoke of Sunday’s election as a referendum on the European Union, the link between France and Germany, and ecological ambition, laicism and freedom.

In the camp of the favored Macron, there is now trembling as to whether enough young people and leftists from the camp of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who almost failed with almost 22 percent, have been inspired. Some might choose Marine Le Pen out of frustration.

Olaf Scholz, chancellor of tortuous and maltreated sentences, has little to say about Ukraine. But one likes to listen to his foreign minister. “We are ready to do even more to ensure the safety of our partners,” said Annalena Baerbock in Riga after meeting her Baltic counterparts. Nord Stream was a “fatal mistake”. According to her, deliveries of armored vehicles are “not taboo for us, even if it sometimes sounds like it in the German debate”.

Specifically, the Greens politician proposes an “exchange of rings”: Eastern European countries should deliver the weapons they once bought from the Soviet Union or Russia to Ukraine, which would later be replaced by material from Germany or other NATO countries. Voltaire offered the following advice: “Everything you say should be true. But you should not say everything that is true.”

In the history of economics there is the old tenet of the 16th century English merchant Thomas Gresham that bad money (silver) drives out good money (gold). I have to think of that spontaneously when reading our interview with Joachim Wenning, the head of Munich Re. The man from the world’s largest reinsurer describes how one (worse) crisis is constantly crowding out another (bad) crisis – the pandemic is the climate catastrophe, the Ukraine war is the pandemic and nobody is talking about cybercrime anymore anyway. The problem: All crises persist and the state is already overwhelmed with one of these megacrises. Specifically, Wenning says about…

• … the risk of military battles: “War cannot be insured because it is ruinous. War damage is therefore excluded in the most important sectors such as personal and property insurance.”
• … cyber attacks: “Unfortunately, I don’t know of any government that has this issue on its agenda. I am also not very confident that this will change in the coming years. It was similar with the pandemic. You should be preparing now for the next outbreak. But this topic is also being neglected by politicians at the moment. There will always be more acute issues in the short term.”
• … climate protection: “The state would have to provide a concrete budget. The special fund of 100 billion euros that the Bundeswehr is now receiving shows that this would be possible. The state must lead a transformation project. Unfortunately, there is no such plan.”
• … natural disasters: “In the last decade, the burdens have averaged around 200 billion euros worldwide every year. Last year it was 250 billion – and the trend is rising. If we don’t change course, the economic damage will be far greater.”

Perhaps the clear thinker Wenning should soon give a talk to one of the federal government’s crisis teams.

When carmakers launch new models, the PR blower is cranked up to instant peak power. It’s the same now with BMW: The Munich-based company is attacking the market leader Mercedes and Tesla (Model S) in the top segment with its new 7 series. BMW Sales Director Pieter Nota raves about a “true masterpiece” with four different drives. For the first time, the i7 is a purely electric variant. Sure, the back seat can now be transformed into an Amazon cinema at the touch of a button and the computer can take over the wheel if necessary. But the selected production variety is expensive and the gap to Mercedes is still large – also in terms of returns. The experts my colleague Franz Hubik spoke to for the cover story are significantly more skeptical than the BMW strategists, who are just about to switch to the fast lane.

If the PS corporations are already proud of their drive-in cinema, they can also learn from the great zampano Federico Fellini: “A good beginning and a good ending make a good film, provided they are not too far apart.”

In the oligarch crime thriller at Lake Tegernsee, the “Task Force Investigation Group Ukraine” recently founded by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is hopingto confiscate the four villas of Alisher Usmanov, a Kremlin confidant, in Rottach-Egern. As with properties in Italy or London, his ownership is concealed by a network of letterbox and offshore companies. At Tegernsee, the real estate was acquired by straw men through Munich notaries for companies in the tax haven of the Isle of Man.

But in the “Concession Agreement” Usmanow – Sivtsev Vrazhek Street, Flat 15, Moscow – is named as the owner and beneficial owner. The BKA investigators have now come across 36 offshore companies and 90 suspected money laundering reports at Usmanow in Germany alone. Usmanow’s Airbus A340-313, with which he managed to flee to Tashkent from Munich shortly before the sanctions were imposed, the native of Uzbek cannot use for the time being: the registration was withdrawn by the Isle of Man. His jet with the identification M-IABU remains on the ground. The meaning of “IABU” is obvious: “I am Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov”.

And then there is Kevin David Lehmann, 19, who is currently the youngest billionaire in the world, according to calculations by the US magazine “Forbes”.. You’ve probably never heard of this Kevin, even though he’s worth $3.3 billion. The little darling comes from the 50 percent share in the drugstore chain “dm”, which his 80-year-old father Günther signed over to him. The senior became very wealthy with the pancake retail group, including the Kolossa supermarkets – all sold to Spar in 1998. 24 years earlier he had financed the “dm” expansion with more and more branches for the druggist’s son Götz Werner (who died in February). Half of the company was there for that. Incidentally, the Lehmanns never commented on “dm”. The fact that Filius Kevin is now displacing the glamorous fashion entrepreneur Kylie Jenner, 24, from the top spot of the youngest billionaires should not be worth an interview.

As a journalist, the cabaret artist Werner Finck is a lot closer to me: “I’ve kept a lot of things in my life, but not my mouth.”

I wish you an exciting, communicatively strong day.

It greets you cordially

Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs