there are two country risks in Europe. The obvious is that of Italy after the election of post-fascist Giorgia Meloni. It is quite possible that she will soon declare Viktor Orbán, the messenger of illiberalism in the middle of democracy, to be the biggest ally against Brussels.
French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, on the other hand, argued with ethical standards: “In Europe we have a number of values, and we will make sure that these values are respected by everyone with regard to human rights and the right to abortion.”
Since reliability and loyalty to principles are not part of the values of the new Roman legal pact, it is safe to bet on the next internal dispute of the Meloni squad. Even the best wishes from a few Christian Democrats in Brussels for Meloni’s alliance partner Silvio Berlusconi shouldn’t help.
“The fun is over for Europe now,” Meloni commented on her party’s election victory. In line with this, the euro fell to a 20-year low after the election.
Does the politician bring even more chaos in troubled times? Or will it, intentionally or unintentionally, initiate positive processes of change in the EU? Write us your opinion in five sentences [email protected] We will publish selected articles with attribution on Thursday in print and online.
The somewhat less visible risk in Europe is the situation in Great Britain. The momentum with which the new Prime Minister Liz Truss wants to copy her idol Margaret Thatcher is appalling the financial markets: the planned massive tax rates on credit caused them to let the exchange rate of the pound collapse.
Early on Monday evening, the British currency temporarily lost almost five percent against the US dollar – at $1.035 it hit its lowest level since 1971.
My colleagues from the finance department write about the “flash crash”. Incidentally, the Bank of England has a good deal of complicity in this. The central bank responded to speculation that it would soon raise interest rates with the succinct statement that it would wait until November with a reaction to the market turbulence. So much beer silence promptly provoked renewed losses of the pound.
Japanese bank Nomura predicts that the British currency will fall below par with the dollar by the end of the year. And the chief economist at UBS’s global wealth management firm noted that investors would tend to see the new Conservative government in Downing Street as a “doomsday cult.”
Even Raphael Bostic of the US Federal Reserve’s Atlanta branch has warned of the risk of a global recession from British politics. Conclusion: The rebirth of Thatcherism is a case for the ER.
One of the great mysteries in the information situation about Russia is the physical problems that keep occurring all of a sudden with the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
In both cases, the pressure has now fallen sharply. The experts in the naval authorities have identified a gas leak as the source of the problem. Possibly through sabotage or attacks.
Gas is currently not flowing anyway, but the Federal Ministry of Economics and the Federal Network Agency are alarmed: “We currently do not know the causes of the pressure drop,” they say, and there are no effects on the security of supply in Germany. The storage levels continue to rise, currently to around 91 percent.
The current leader of the opposition, Friedrich Merz, naturally doesn’t find the old saying by the SPD politician Franz Müntefering, “The opposition sucks,” particularly amusing.
The 66-year-old amateur pilot often responds to the pressure to offer himself as the nation’s reserve chancellor in interviews. He now assured the full-time opposition organ “Bild”: “We are ready to govern.” All that was missing was the statement, which was prudently kept dry for later: “I want to become chancellor!”
The CDU politician has also found a new old topic: social robbery by refugees, for which the federal government is responsible. “We are now experiencing social tourism from these refugees to Germany, back to the Ukraine to Germany, back to the Ukraine, a large number of whom are now using this system. We have a problem that is getting bigger,” says Merz, who also included refugees from Russia in his immigration considerations.
But the fact that young people from Moscow and elsewhere do not want to serve Vladimir Putin as cannon fodder and that the CDU in particular has always called for solidarity with Ukraine was not mentioned in the short presentation on “social tourism”.
After a summer of scandals, public broadcaster ARD is looking for signs of purification, which it creates itself. The Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) is pushing ahead with the new rule that the sideline activities of the five directors should be capped at 5,000 euros a year in the future, according to several media reports. Any additional cash donations will be “transferred to the BR from the next financial year”.
Technical director Birgit Spanner-Ulmer caused a sensation both internally and externally, not only because she uses two company cars with two drivers. Most recently, it was about her extra income at the Salzgitter steel group, where she is said to have earned around 440,000 euros since 2016 (her BR annual salary: 266,000 euros). Now, apparently, Spanner-Ulmer wants to let her mandate on the Salzgitter control committee expire in May 2023.
And then there is longtime Siemens patron Heinrich von Pierer, who was acquitted of bribery charges by the Greek Court of Appeal in Athens – the lower court, on the other hand, had ordered 15 years imprisonment. Pierer’s lawyer is now writing about a “first-class acquittal”.
The last chapter has now been written in the Siemens chronicle of the slush funds. 20 of a total of 22 accused have not been found guilty of money laundering.
Nothing seems to have remained of the suspicion of corruption that was voiced, contrary to what some experts predicted. Pierer is rehabilitated, also in Athens. “An expert is a man who can say afterwards exactly why his prediction was wrong,” Winston Churchill reveals to us.
I wish you an enjoyable, productive day.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
You can subscribe to the Morning Briefing here: