this Monday, the view of the “global village”, which is one through television cameras, falls on an island country that stands still for a few hours and is silent for two minutes. To a city in which the dignitaries of the world (one representative per country, no private jets, last mile in the bus) have gathered, from US President Joe Biden to Japan’s Emperor Naruhito to Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. More than 500 state guests are invited. Russia’s Vladimir Putin isn’t there, but nobody misses him here.
The state funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II pushes all other issues aside – those of war, recession and pandemic, but also those of the difficult preservation of the Commonwealth and the crisis of Great Britain, which has not proven itself as a member of the European community. All the obituaries, dossiers and royal praises of more than 70 years of regency have been written, today most people look wistfully to Westminster Abbey in London and Windsor Castle. There, the Queen of Hearts is buried in the King George VI Side Chapel alongside her husband Prince Philip, her parents and sister Princess Margaret.
What do you want to say: Elizabeth II was effective without being powerful. More in November in the next season of The Crown.
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The number of doubters and critics of Robert Habeck’s official art has noticeably increased. The Green Federal Minister of Economics, who started out so promisingly and full of atmosphere, looks to some like a plumber who forgot his pipe wrench at home after the gas levy meltdown. In such a situation, friendly fire from one’s own house is the least use – and yet it is under fire, as the internal minutes of a ministry meeting that we have made clear.
(Photo: IMAGO/Metodi Popov)
Things got heated because the “Zeit” had reported that constitutional protection officers had allegedly “examined” two of Habeck’s top officials. They were noticed by Russia-friendly energy positions. It was about an “awareness-raising meeting” between the house management and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In the crisis meeting, officials spoke of “strong uncertainty”. One said: “If I express my professional opinion, then there is a possibility that I will be suspected of being ‘Russian understander’.”
Habeck’s State Secretary Patrick Graichen replied that the Ministry of Economics had “pro-Russian policy for years”, since the Greens were first responsible, things had changed fundamentally. And he said a sentence that is one hundred percent truthful: “Now Habeck is under pressure.”
(Photo: IMAGO/xcitepress)
In the cabinet, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) is the antipode. He is said to have politely said internally that he had presented certain templates from the Ministry of Economic Affairs in more detail. He openly criticized Habeck’s energy policy on ARD and opposed “ideological commitments, keyword nuclear power”.
In order to lower electricity prices, all coal-fired power plants would have to go online and the three remaining German nuclear power plants would have to continue to be used. The state cannot compensate for losses in prosperity through permanently higher debts, explained the FDP leader. After all, loans have to be repaid by the people. In reality, galloping prices threatened economic development the most: “You fight inflation differently than a corona pandemic.”
Poland’s state-owned oil company PKN Orlen is number one in Eastern Europe with sales of EUR 29 billion. Now he wants to take over 54 percent of the shares in the PCK refinery in East Germany’s Schwedt, which was previously held by the Russian oil giant Rosneft and recently placed under German trusteeship. Orlen already gets petrol and diesel from Schwedt, for example for his filling station network (“Star”).
The offer is delicate for Berlin, since PKN Orlen has become a political instrument of the national-populist ruling party PiS. This intensified in the summer after a merger with the oil producer Lotos, as a result of which the company took over several regional newspapers, but had to hand over activities to the Saudi Arabian oil company Saudi Aramco due to antitrust conditions. A deal could make it easier for the Schwedt refinery to be supplied with crude oil via the Polish port of Gdansk – instead of via the politically undesirable Russian Druzhba pipeline.
In some articles on the state of the nation, one quintessence stands out: “Never waste a good crisis.” Motto: Use the crisis for reforms and to improve the world, it’s big enough. But if we take the perspective of the Dax companies, the question arises: What crisis are you talking about? 15 of the 40 companies listed in the top stock exchange league are expected to end 2022 with record profits, a further increase from 2021, which was also a peak year.
According to calculations by our expert Ulf Sommer, the Dax companies should probably earn a total of 130 billion euros. This can be explained by currency effects (weak euro), a slightly changed business model and the well-saturated position of a large oligopoly that can impose slightly higher prices.
And so a company that is only German by name, like Linde, lives just as much in the idyll as BMW AG, which lives on two-ton energy monsters, or the chip company Infineon. They all play in a league far removed from all the emergency nationalizations currently dominating the newspaper headlines. And maybe Porsche AG will soon join the ranks of carefree companieswhose shares will be offered at 76.50 to 82.50 euros before the imminent IPO, which equates to a valuation of 75 billion.
A transfer of 30 million euros each by the major US bank BNY Mellon and the Hamburg private banking group Warburg pleased the Federal Central Tax Office. It is a small compensation for all the damage that financial institutions have done to the German state in collaboration with rich investors. In this specific case, they simply had taxes refunded for share transactions and a BC German Equity Special Fund that were not incurred at all. Deutsche Bank, which has been somewhat conspicuous in the past for shady transactions, will probably contribute a single-digit million amount to the money transfer from the Americans to the tax authorities. She had acted as a lender.
The psychological background of these scams remains a mystery. The physicist Isaac Newton once revealed that he could “calculate the motion of the celestial bodies, but not the sometimes abnormal behavior of human beings”.
And then there’s popular Russian pop singer Alla Pugacheva, 73, who left for Israel with her husband, TV presenter Maxim Galkin, who is 27 years her junior, after the start of the Ukraine war and who is now (back in Russia) sharply criticizing the Kremlin for the military aggression. She wants to be classified as a foreign agent, she says, just like her husband, who has already publicly denounced the sending of troops to Ukraine. The Ministry of Justice then put him on a blacklist of so-called agents because he was allegedly politically active in exchange for money for Ukraine.
Pugacheva then declared “solidarity with my husband, an honest, decent and sincere person, a real and not for sale patriot of Russia, who wishes his homeland prosperity, a peaceful life, freedom of speech and an end to the dying of our boys for illusory goals that are ours Make the country a pariah and make life more difficult for our citizens.” For the superstar, who has always kept his distance from politics, these are strong tones.
Finally, the poet TS Eliot comes to mind: “Only those who risk going too far can even find out how far they can go.”
I wish you a brave start to the week. It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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