what goes up comes down again – the stock market currently works according to the paddle wheel principle of a Mississippi steamer in the water. We look at the long-term graph of the profits in the Dax and are amazed at the high pillars of the past. After the Corona year 2020, the total net result shot up to 128.5 billion euros, with 28 of the 40 companies in the stock exchange league earning more than one billion each.
This year, however, the piling of bags of money is over. The analysts have lowered their forecasts by ten percent and more, in the case of Lufthansa even by 70 percent. Some companies like Thyssen-Krupp are suspending the outlook, while others like Schaeffler are ditching it entirely. The philosopher Karl Jaspers comes to mind among the learned consolators: “Hopelessness is already the anticipated defeat.”
The fact that there is currently a billion-dollar risk in the Dax, as analyzed in our cover story, is not particularly surprising. The risks have wrapped themselves around companies like growth rings around a tree.
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- Risk one: whoever does business in Russia suffers. This applies, for example, to the Pattex and Persil producer Henkel, which accounts for almost five percent of the total turnover of 20 billion euros there. According to our calculations, the 100 largest German companies listed on the stock exchange account for a total of almost one percent in Russia.
- Risk two: If you need a lot of raw materials, you pay. Bank of America concludes that the commodities of every economy have become more expensive on a scale not seen since World War I in 1915. Steel, building materials and chemical companies therefore suffer particularly from the stock market traders’ withdrawal of love.
- Risk three: If you have complicated production chains, you look down the drain. The failure to supply wiring harnesses and wiring systems from the war-torn Ukraine hit the automotive industry, and Volkswagen and BMW in particular. Palladium and nickel are missing from Russia. Due to the production breaks, BMW reports a negative impact on earnings of 950 million euros.
- Risk four: those who backed globalization the old-fashioned way of the 1990s will have to painfully correct themselves. The close global network helped the German export-oriented companies, in the top 100 exports account for more than 80 percent of sales. This business model is evaporating in the face of the “glocalization” trend.
In this situation, some may only find it helpful to close their eyes briefly so that they can see better again afterwards.
Donald Trump, 75, was known as a big swaggerer and conspiracy theorist, but never as a non-communicator. But on January 6, 2021, the day the Capitol was stormed, the ex-president may have enjoyed bubble baths for a long time, meditated or practiced asanas, in any case the other permanent phone caller didn’t officially make a single phone call between 11:17 a.m. and 6:54 p.m. that day, like turns out. It was purely coincidental that the supporters he whipped up were desecrating the US Parliament during this period.
Investigators from the parliamentary inquiry committee are skeptical about any leisure hypotheses about Trump. According to the Washington Post, they check whether he communicated via employees’ cell phones or via prepaid cell phones, i.e. disposable phones. The Twitter King a. D. is like the digital innocence of the country in this matter: “I have no idea what a disposable cell phone is, as far as I know, I’ve never even heard the term.”
Most Britons and the MPs of the Conservative ruling party still believe that they need someone like Boris Johnson against the warmonger Vladimir Putin, a wisp against a dervish.
But there are still the twelve corona parties in 2020 and 2021 at Downing Street, the seat of government. The prime minister denied wrongdoing in parliament, saying there were no parties. Nevertheless, after intensive investigations, Scotland Yard distributed the first 20 fine notices. The names of the recipients are unknown – yet.
Johnson himself is probably not affected for the time being, but a few more notifications will follow. The head of government is said to have personally attended six of the twelve meetings, although strict contact restrictions applied. When it comes to “Partygate”, one would like to study the 300 photos and 500 pages of documents that Scotland Yard has at their disposal. Let Arthur Conan Doyle speak, the author of Sherlock Holmes: “What one man can invent, another can discover.”
For months we have been hearing from the political corona fighters that the number of infections, which the media likes to present, is less important than the situation in the clinics. And here Lower Saxony’s Health Minister Daniela Behrens (SPD) calmly describes the situation.
In view of the high number of infections, the burden on the hospitals is high, she says, “but it is not an overload”. The federal states have “little possibilities for interpretation” with regard to the new Infection Protection Act. All pandemic measures would be strictly checked by the administrative courts.
And so only Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hamburg are sticking to the previous hard corona course via the “hotspot regulation”, which should lead to lawsuits. In the other countries, for example, the mask requirement in retail ends. Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) complains that the federal government has disempowered the states in the Corona cause: “It would have been right to give us the toolbox so that we could use the tools depending on the situation.”
But: The metaphor of the “instrument box” is so worn out that one can speak of sound disturbance.
(Photo: Social Bee)
And then there is the founder Zarah Bruhn, who has been helping refugees with her company “Socialbee” since 2016 to find their feet in the German job market. The 31-year-old now has completely different tasks: she will be the representative for social innovations at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
When she took office, she said: “It is important to me that more capital is made available. Important funding programs should also be opened up to social innovations.” Bruhn sees herself as a pioneer. It’s no longer a niche, she says, additional social offers from entrepreneurs are good because they can try out new things more easily.
A few years ago, she expressed her mission in a beautiful campaign: “Soft skills can come the hard way.” Sometimes the “soft” ones are the really tough ones.
I wish you a gentle start to this day.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs