first casualty in military conflict is truth. This can also be seen in the Ukraine dispute between the USA and Russia. Yesterday at the UN Security Council: US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield considers more than 100,000 Russian soldiers on the border with Ukraine to be a “threat to international security”. Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebensya, on the other hand, accused the United States of “wanting to stir up hysteria” and of deceiving the international community with “unfounded allegations”. The statement about 100,000 soldiers is not true, after all, before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the USA presented evidence of weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be false.
Unfortunately, there is another gun issue this morning. For years we’ve wondered about trigger-happy people in the US, where holstering seems to be a human right. In the meantime, however, gun violence is also increasing in Germany. There is the gas station employee who dies because he insists on wearing a mask. There is the 18-year-old who kills a student at the University of Heidelberg.
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And there are two suspected perpetrators and poachers from Saarland who killed a young police officer and a chief inspector with headshots during a traffic check early Monday morning. One of the men was taken away in his butcher’s apron. Germany is shocked. Not only is there a lack of respect, as the chancellor likes to say, there is also a lack of respect for life.
The Munich microchip company Siltronic cannot escape geopolitics. It states that the USA, Europe and China/Taiwan are cultivating their future markets and are not selling important companies to one of the other blocs. And so the Federal Ministry of Economics simply let the 31st of January pass. It would have been the last date for a placement on the sale of Siltronics to Taiwanese rival Globalwafers, which had been approved by all antitrust authorities. Deal broken.
Siltronic manufactures “wafers”, silicon discs, the basic material for semiconductor chips. He stands behind the decision, says Hannes Walter (SPD), Vice-Chairman of the Economic Committee: “We do not gain technological sovereignty by selling our silverware.” Julia Klöckner, economic policy spokeswoman for the Union faction, also agrees. Only the coalition partner FDP reacted cautiously.
Corona is the pest that divides the world of business: into the class of controlling quasi-monopolies and into the class of those who are at best tolerable and miss out on future opportunities. In category one we find a “superstar company” like Amazon. It increased its R&D spending by 19 percent to nearly $43 billion in 2020. Many German medium-sized companies belong to category two, especially in mechanical engineering.
For the first time in ten years, spending by the German economy on innovations fell by 3.6 percent to 170.5 billion euros in the first year of Corona. Expenditure on research and development even fell by 6.3 percent. Apart from Italy, nowhere else in Europe has there been such a decline, says Christian Rammer from the Center for European Economic Research.
Okay, the inflation rate for Germany for January no longer shows the ugly five in front of the decimal point. But 4.9 percent is still an alarm value, after all there was the effect of the expired VAT reduction. In view of such an increase in prices, there is a risk of tough collective bargaining – especially as the shortage of skilled workers is spreading. The scarcer a good is, the more expensive it becomes.
The skilled labor crisis is “growth crisis number one”, comments editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes. All climate and growth strategies are at risk. So far, it’s “completely open”, says Matthes, as to where the engineers, IT experts, craftsmen and planners should come from, “in order to achieve all the right goals”. We need more immigration, but the number is falling here too. In the long run, that’s bad for the location and for inflation.
In addition to car drivers, house builders are among the politically influential groups in Germany. That’s why Tempo 130 is missing, which is why the federal government is now partially withdrawing the stop on over-subsidization of climate-friendly construction projects. According to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, a solution for the affected 24,000 applications that are with KfW is emerging.
Accordingly, applicants who want to renovate or plan a particularly energy-saving “Efficiency House 40” should continue to be considered. Others should be allowed to apply again or receive a low-interest loan. And there could also be exceptions for KfW 55 buildings: if the investors promise to rent the new apartments cold for a maximum of ten euros per square meter and to refrain from index or graduated rents. The proposals are so complicated that they do not mean an easy PR turnaround for Robert Habeck.
Man lives from his associations. When I see photos of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson these days, I hear Lionel Richie. In one hit he sings about the time to throw away all work: “We’re going to party, karamu, fiesta, forever / Come on and sing along / All night long (all night), All night (all night ).” And you can already see twelve lockdown events at 10 Downing Street in your mind’s eye, which Scotland Yard is currently investigating using 300 photos and 500 documents.
The elevated levels of putrefaction in the state have spooked Johnson’s ruling party, especially his predecessor Theresa May. After all, even a glossed-over report by internal investigator Sue Gray addressed “failures in leadership and judgment” and “excessive alcohol consumption.” One reads sentences like: “At least some of the meetings in question represent a serious failure not only in terms of the high standards expected of those who work in government but also of the standards expected of the British public as a whole expected at the time.” In the end, Boris Johnson said “sorry” in Parliament. He promised he would fix it all. But this party is not over yet.
And then there’s Christian Seifert, who until recently was celebrated as the “voice of German football”. A “tenner” of TV marketing, who, as head of the German Football League (DFL), secured billions for the clubs. But now the soccer man is becoming an anti-soccer man, who is building a streaming portal for league competitions and events with majority partner Axel Springer in Cologne. Handball, basketball and ice hockey are the focus, but not football. S Nation Media GmbH is the name of one Seifert company, Reedstreet Ventures the other, named after the Schilfstrasse where Seifert lived when he was young in Rastatt-Ottersdorf, Baden.
Seifert left a bon mot to the football scene: “To believe that everything will continue as before, the money will come out of the socket and the Bundesliga doesn’t have to do anything but just keep playing, is likely to turn out to be a misconception.”
I wish you a productive day.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
PS: Is it up to our Federal Minister of Economics, In the future, we will no longer measure prosperity solely in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), but also with 31 alternative indicators. We want to know from you: Is Robert Habeck right in saying that the previous measurement of prosperity is outdated? How should welfare be measured? Write us your opinion in five sentences [email protected] . We will publish selected articles with attribution on Thursday in print and online.
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