the world now knows the face of Frances Haugen. A woman who now reported to the US Senate about her experiences in the data company Facebook, a power of monopoly in the 21st century. According to Haugen, the group has “repeatedly decided against the good of society and in favor of more profit” in the past. The 37-year-old has three main allegations:
On Monday the technology of the Zuckerberg Group was at its end, on Tuesday the ethics. The day must come when the structure is at the end – and Instagram and Whatsapp are split off.
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The symptom of China’s crisis is called Evergrande. A real estate mess with five times as much liabilities as equity. But the whole People’s Republic, which has achieved great economic and socio-political achievements, is built on the quicksand of large debts, as our cover story shows. They make up 287 percent of economic output, as in the USA and the euro zone – only the per capita income is much higher there.
And that does not include the shadow banks with a volume of eight billion dollars. “Real growth” after “fictional growth”, demands President Xi Jinping in this emergency. The Mao-like ruler punished debauchery and had that decree for the overheated real estate market
- Liabilities make up less than 70 percent of assets,
- the net debt does not exceed the equity
- and short-term debts are covered by cash.
Beijing has come up with “three red lines” and the solidity friends’ motto: “Only cash is true.” But now, of all things, another Chinese property developer is in acute financial difficulties: the Fantasia Holdings Group. Let’s put it this way: “Fantasialand burned down”.
The Institute for the World Economy in Kiel is 107 years old and was headed by great economists such as Herbert Giersch and Horst Siebert. But somehow the prestigious structure has become an academic transit station, at least for Gabriel Felbermayr. Last week he left for Vienna after only two and a half years.
(Photo: Imago Images)
According to our information, Stefan Kooths and Holger Görg will succeed him on an interim basis. Since the state of Schleswig-Holstein, the federal government, the Leibniz Association and the Kiel University also have a say in the foundation under public law, a dual leadership is probably the logical consequence for the time being. However, the search for a president continues – who will no longer be solely liable in the future. Managing director Birgit Austen-Bosy should be treated equally. That doesn’t exactly make things any easier.
A few weeks before the World Climate Conference in Glasgow, the Nobel Committee in Stockholm sensitively attuned to it. It awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics to the German Klaus Hasselmann, the ex-director of the Hamburg Max Planck Institute. He researched global climate models – the basis for environmental policy measures such as the Paris climate protection agreement.
He shares half of the prize endowed with around 985,000 euros with the Japanese Syukuro Manabe, the other half goes to the Italian Giorgio Parisi. The 89-year-old Hasselmann could not be reached for hours after the announcement of the Nobel decision, before he was surprised to journalists: “I don’t want to wake up at all, it’s a wonderful dream for me. I’m retired now and I’ve been a little lazy lately.
One of the many mistakes made by the British government is not having adequately licensed French fishermen to do their jobs. That strains the already strained relationships. Clément Beaune, Minister for Europe in Paris, declares frankly that the European Commission could cut energy supplies for Great Britain and its Channel Island Jersey off the French coast. A decision should be made within a few days. The British thought “they could live for themselves and badmouth Europe at the same time”. That couldn’t work. “The EU Commission is moving, it has to do more,” explains French Prime Minister Jean Castex. The old adage applies here: “You catch fish with a rod, people with words.”
There is one thing you can rely on during the exploratory talks for a new federal government, which have been declared “confidential”: If the Union has a say – that leaky battleship for many years on its way to dry dock – then the content of the conversation is guaranteed to be in the media. True to the motto: “Get your opinion!”
Indiscretion is a matter of honor, says the CDU and CSU delegation troops, which are already conspicuously large with 15 emissaries. The fact that the interviewees from the FDP and the Greens feel drunk and annoyed is part of the prompter system.
And then there is Hendrik Wüst, 46, Minister of Transport in North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, who deserted to Berlin, succeeded him as Prime Minister in the most populous federal state. Looking at the latest election statistics, the surveyed announced that many of their own CDU voters had migrated to the SPD and the Greens – which is why it would not be advisable to position the Union further to the right. Something like that had been suggested to him in the past.
After all, Wüst, as Secretary General of the NRW CDU, wrote a position paper together with Markus Söder from Bavaria when he was young: “Modern bourgeois conservatism”. In the meantime, Wüst has liberalized himself to such an extent that he can lead a government with the liberals.
I wish you a wonderful start to the week.
I warmly greet you
you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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