Good morning dear readers,
an illusory world is breaking up – and we’re not talking about Donald Trump’s here yet: the takeover of the ailing crypto trading platform FTX by the market leader Binance failed late Wednesday evening. The prices of Bitcoin and Co. are plummeting, the first bloggers are writing about the “Lehman moment” in the crypto industry.
Binance said on Twitter that they had reviewed FTX’s books and decided not to make a possible acquisition: “The problems are beyond our control and beyond our ability to help.”
FTX investors are preparing for a total failure. Customers who still have assets on the exchange must do the same. The recent reversal brought renewed price slumps in the crypto market. Bitcoin, the largest and oldest digital currency, fell below $16,000, its lowest level in over two years.
More than 24 hours after the first polling stations closed, the general election in the USA is still undecided, but one message is clear: The much-touted “Red Wave” does not materialize (whereby red is the color of the arch-conservative Republicans in the USA).
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However, the outcome of the election in the Senate could remain open until December. In the US state of Georgia, after counting 99 percent of the votes, neither the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock nor his Republican challenger Herschel Walker seems to have achieved a result of more than 50 percent. Therefore, a runoff election on December 6th could be necessary.
This is a serious defeat, especially for Donald Trump, who was heavily involved in the election campaign. The best evidence of his humiliation: He’s complaining again about electoral fraud. With a renewed presidential candidacy, would Trump still have a chance against his inner-party adversary Ron DeSantis, who was triumphantly re-elected governor of Florida?
Conclusion: question exciting, answer open.
And US President Joe Biden? Late Wednesday evening German time in the White House, he announced his Rudolfscharping-esque version of a victory message: “We lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any other Democratic president in his first midterm election in the last 40 years.”
Let’s be honest: if you have to resort to such superlatives, you didn’t really win the election, you just got off lightly. Especially since Biden could still be facing what has already made many of his predecessors sour in governing – to instigate against an opposing parliamentary majority in one or even both chambers. Incidentally, the majority in the House of Representatives is 218 seats and in the Senate 51 votes.
Our Washington correspondent Annett Meiritz therefore warns: Biden should not misunderstand the election result as a mandate for a renewed candidacy – but rather seize the moment and make room for a younger Democratic candidate in 2024.
Vladimir Putin missed the right time for his own departure by at least a decade. Yesterday Russia’s permanent president was conspicuously absent from Russian television screens. Instead, his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, had to give the order to withdraw from the Ukrainian regional capital of Cherson in a carefully choreographed “briefing” with his generals – probably to protect the Russian troops from being surrounded.
If this order is actually implemented (the Ukrainian side still has doubts), it will be Russia’s heaviest military defeat since the failed advance on Kyiv in the first days of the war.
How is the war going now? The most likely main target of the Russian military in the coming winter months: Repeatedly interrupting the supply of water, electricity and heat in Ukraine. Guntram Wolff, Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations: “The destruction of central parts of the infrastructure is affecting Ukraine’s economic viability.”
Putin’s calculus: the more destruction Russian missiles cause, the more expensive reconstruction becomes and the more Ukrainians flee to Europe, the more support for Kyiv in the EU and the US will crumble. Without outside help, both Russians and Ukrainians realize that Ukrainian forces would not be able to push back the invaders.
The synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany remains divided on the question of whether Germany should supply arms to Ukraine. The church parliamentarians had no problem yesterday with another political determination: the synod passed the demand for a general speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour. Except for the men and women of the church itself – they should only be allowed to drive a maximum of 100 on freeways and 80 on country roads on official trips.
This rule is too general for me. Why not a points system where, for example, regular cold showers give you the right to exceed the church speed limit by ten kilometers an hour? A special regulation for vicars accompanied by deaconesses on light motorcycles also seems overdue to me.
And logic dictates: If Protestant men or women of God travel together with a Catholic colleague in a service car in the spirit of ecumenism, a speed limit of 110 km/h should be considered the mean between the Protestant and general speed limit, as long as the Catholic Church does not issue its own speed limits. Jesus was not a leveler.
Best regards
Her
Christian Rickens
Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt
