Rhetorically, Olaf Scholz’s appearances often encourage people to think about what will be possible in the future with the help of artificial intelligence in speech machines. You have no idea how often newspapers have grabbed the following theses on Ukraine in the headlines: “Putin must not win his war!” And: “There must be no dictated peace.” And: “Putin wants to return to a world order in which the stronger dictate what is right.”
During his flying visit to the business elite of Davos, which this time had to do without Russia and China, the Chancellor said these sentences for the umpteenth time. And he also mentioned in passing that Germany was indeed supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine.
That Olaf Scholz is squirming on this matter like Boris Johnson on the issue of the Corona parties at 10 Downing Streetmay be related to a sentence that Siemtje Möller, Parliamentary Defense Secretary, dropped on ZDF.
According to this, it is the “uniform position” of the western NATO states not to deliver any western model armored personnel carriers or main battle tanks to Ukraine, i.e. no German “Leopard 2” either, which could bring about a turning point in Donbass.
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At the special session of the Defense Committee on May 13, Scholz also declared that it had been agreed with Great Britain, France and the USA not to deliver any battle tanks directly for the time being.
That went under because some in the FDP had started a scandal because of the ineffectiveness of the chancellor’s statements. The question is whether the delivery verdict also applies to “Marder” tanks – against a Russia that promotes Scholz to a “highly armed nuclear power”.
Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) explained in the Handelsblatt that the federal government had “reacted quickly and decisively overall” on Ukraine policy. As in the introductory seminar, the doctor of law (dissertation topic: “ECJ and property guarantee”) has good reason to comment on ideas from the EU that the frozen assets of the oligarchs suspected of being Putinists could be used to rebuild Ukraine: “Such confiscation would have to comply with the requirements of the Basic Law and European law.”
In concrete terms, this means that property rights should not mean as little in this country as they do in Russia or China. However, the liberal wants to use the frozen currency reserves of the Russian central bank – Moscow is violating fundamental rules of international law. Buschmann will not have much to do with this in his doctoral thesis.
Our weekend story is about the “perfect storm” – a metaphor borrowed from a bestseller book and a hit movie and meaning the maximum worst-case scenario. Inflation, broken supply chains, recession, pandemic and the Ukraine war fully indicate.
Some trends can be clearly seen:
- Total globalization is becoming a regionalized world economy. This includes the conscious safeguarding and diversification of supply chains, thinking and optimizing in economic blocks (“friend-shoring”).
- Inflation is returning and will make the differences between rich and poor countries even more pronounced. Hunger in Africa and Asia is increasing with more expensive fertilizers and food.
- Rising prices meet an incipient recession that is getting worse as central banks hike interest rates in their newfound fight against inflation. But that could lead to a loss of confidence in monetary policy, which has waited far too long.
- After years of excessive debt, the financial resources to fuel growth are often lacking. With a debt ratio of 140 percent, the US government will soon face a problem that Germany also had decades ago: a double-digit percentage of the budget goes into debt service.
- After the zigzag course on the stock exchanges, there is a risk of further severe setbacks, to which the disenchantment of the previously grotesquely overvalued tech companies is making a significant contribution. Stockbrokers are not sensitive and talk about the “dead cat bounce”: The cat that fell out of the high-rise bounces up again after the impact, but no longer comes to life.
Only a united EU can help against political storm damage, but to do that it would first have to neutralize Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is behaving like an enemy agent. Anyone who doubts Europe must read Albert Camus: “In the depths of winter I finally found that an invincible summer lay within me.”
The unconditional basic income has been discussed for a long time. Götz Werner, deceased founder of the drugstore chain “dm”, saw a great opportunity here in the working world changed by digitization.
Handelsblatt professor Bert Rürup now sees Werner’s miracle idea introduced through the back door – by a decision by the Bundestag that has hardly been noticed. There, the government, with the votes of the SPD, Greens and FDP, decided that the long-term unemployed would in future also receive full basic security if they did not seek regular employment.
The previous regulations for unemployment benefit II – vulgo “Hartz IV” – were still based on the principle of “support and demand” from the better days of Gerhard Schröder. In the column “Der Chefökonom” Rürup refers to the current labor shortage, hundreds of thousands are looking for jobs: “One of the most important tasks of economic and social policy should therefore be to motivate as many people as possible to take up employment and those who have so far been in Working part-time, creating incentives to expand their employment.”
However, all efforts in this direction would be thwarted with any form of an unconditional basic income – even with this one.
“Kehraus” was the name of a 1983 film starring Gerhard Polt about the practices of insurance companies. The Allianz insurance company, which apparently wants to get rid of hundreds of medium-sized companies as customers, now seems to be making a clean break.
They would lose protection against fire, storm damage and business interruptions. Herbert Fromme reports this in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” with reference to insurance brokers. “We have increases for several hundred customers, in individual cases up to 400 percent,” says one from the guild. It is about companies with a turnover of less than 500 million euros.
An Allianz spokeswoman explains that one does not want to separate from customers, but since 2018 insurers in property business with industry, trade and agriculture have made a loss of more than five billion euros: “Allianz cannot ignore that either.” That is why they are increasing some segments the prices of companies with a high loss potential. Let’s say it in a friendly way: It’s a “Kehraus light”.
My cultural tip for the weekend: “State of Happiness”. The eight-part series on Arte looks back at the first discovery of oil off the Norwegian coast near Stavanger in 1969 and what it has done to the country. It tells the story of four young Norwegians who come from the bottom, the middle class and the top.
Central to this is the fate of the farmer’s daughter Anna, who is engaged to a boy from a good family, but also the question of what the new oil state will do with its wealth: pure capitalism or the welfare state plus? We know the answer, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, and we’re enjoying that gushing TV quality. You can watch the series here…
And then there is the EY group (formerly: Ernst & Young), which played an embarrassing role as the auditor of the collapsed companies Zeromax in Switzerland and especially Wirecard in Germany.
Now the network of independent companies and partners with its 312,000 employees is planning a radical step that the then EU Commissioner Michel Barnier wanted to make a legal obligation a good ten years ago: the separation into two areas, one for auditing and one for consulting.
That would be the most extreme break in two decades for the “Big Four”, which also includes PwC, Deloitte and KPMG. The oligopoly apparently wants to escape tougher regulation.
More and more people are asking themselves: how can you actually examine companies independently, critically and severely on behalf of the state if, on the other hand, you are advising them and telling them how they can minimize tax payments to the same state via tax havens? In view of the recent turning point, we end with the writer William Faulkner: “Some people only become courageous when they see no other way out.”
I wish you a relaxing weekend.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor