Sigmar Gabriel, former German Minister of Foreign Affairs, is a member of the Bundestag.
The European Union will not shatter in the wake of Brexit, and it will also overcome the economic fallout from the UK’s departure. But Brexit will damage Europe’s role in the world in a way that Europeans currently seem unable to grasp.
BERLIN – The clock is ticking toward March 29 and the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Whether Brexit turns out to be “soft” or “hard,” the UK is set to endure a bout of severe economic turbulence. But Britain has survived much larger crises and will overcome this one at some point. For me, the real question is what Brexit means for the future of Europe.
The “European Idea” will almost certainly survive. The EU will not shatter in the wake of Brexit, and it will overcome the economic fallout from the UK’s departure. But Brexit will damage Europe’s role in the world in a way that we Europeans currently seem unable to grasp. The recent decision by US President Donald Trump’s administration to downgrade the diplomatic status of the EU mission in Washington was perhaps a taste of things to come. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Hans-Werner Sinn, Professor of Economics and Public Finance at the University of Munich, was President of the ifo Institute and serves on the German economy ministry’s Advisory Council. He is the author, most recently, of The Euro Trap: On Bursting Bubbles, Budgets, and Beliefs.
MÜNCHEN – Emmanuel Macron und Angela Merkel haben in Aachen den deutsch-französichen Freundschaftsvertrag erneuert. Dies ist ein wichtiger und notwendiger Schritt für Europa.
Aber wie schon bei der ersten Fassung des Vertrages aus dem Jahr 1963 sollte man die Briten nicht außen vor lassen. Das Vereinigte Königreich ist ein integraler Bestandteil Europas. Es ist die zweitgrößte Volkswirtschaft des Kontinents, so groß wie die 19 kleinsten der 28 EU-Länderzusammengenommen. Ein Austritt aus der EU würde Europa im Mark erschüttern und die Nachkriegsordnung zerstören.
Im Jahr 1963 hatte der deutsche Bundestag dem deutsch-französischen Vertrag eine Präambel vorangestellt, in der klargemacht wurde, dass Deutschland auch Großbritannien in die EWG holen wollte, was ja 1973 gelang.
Auch heute ist ein ähnlicher Schritt angebracht. So ist es begrüßenswert, dass auf Initiative des CDU-Politikers Norbert Röttgen die Spitzen der drei größten deutschen Parteien sowie Vertreter aus Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft einen Brief an das britische Volk gerichtet haben, in dem sie die Briten einladen, in der EU zu bleiben. Eine entsprechende Beschlussfassung des Bundestages ist denkbar. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Ungustiös. Aber dafür ist nicht nur die FPÖ verantwortlich zu machen! (hfk)
30. Jänner 2019, 17:45 derstandard.at
Ein FPÖ-Direktor „fürs Däumchendrehen“ in der Nationalbank, viele weitere Jobs in ÖBB und anderen Staatsbetrieben sorgen für Kritik
Postenschacher, Umfärbung, Politbesetzungen: Die am Mittwoch vom Ministerrat abgesegnete Bestellung des neuen Direktoriums der Nationalbank sorgt für heftige Kritik der Opposition.
Besonders ins Visier genommen wurde die Nominierung von Eduard Schock (FPÖ). Der nicht amtsführende Wiener Stadtrat sei ein „Direktor fürs Däumchendrehen“, wetterte beispielsweise Liste-Jetzt-Klubobmann Bruno Rossmann.
Genüsslich wurde erneut auf die fehlgeleitete SMS von Vizekanzler Heinz-Christian Strache eingegangen. Der FPÖ-Chef hatte in einer Mitteilung gegen eine offenbar diskutierte Reduktion des Nationalbank-Gremiums von vier auf drei Personen protestiert. Da schon Neo-Gouverneur Robert Holzmann auf einem FPÖ-Ticket unterwegs ist, wäre Schock bei einer Verkleinerung wohl nicht zum Zug gekommen. Weshalb SPÖ-Finanzsprecher Jan Krainer nun die Frage stellt, ob Schock denn ein „arbeitsloses Einkommen in der Oesterreichischen Nationalbank“ erhalte. Zudem wird die Managementerfahrung der neuen Direktoren hinterfragt.Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 30-01-2019
Source: Foreign Affairs By Nadège Rolland
Don’t Underestimate China’s Resilience
With the vast, ambitious investment project known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China meant to pull the world closer, making itself the political and economic center of gravity for more than 60 countries within the project’s sweep. But domestic and international opposition to the initiative has mounted in the five years since President Xi Jinping announced its start. Intellectuals within China have expressed concerns about wasteful spending and overstretch. Several governments that were initially enthusiastic about Chinese investment have faced popular backlash to the terms of the loans and the potential for corruption. And the United States has recently joined countries in Europe and the Indo-Asia-Pacific region in an effort to counter the Chinese endeavor with an alternative investment scheme.
Instead of expanding its “circle of friends” and gaining influence, China seems to have done the opposite, spurring a group of disgruntled countries to band together to resist its predatory practices. Some observers claim that the Chinese leadership fails to understand the dynamics that have led other countries to push back and that this blindness increases the likelihood that Xi’s “project of the century” will soon become a fiasco. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Dalia Marin is a Professor of Economics at the Technical University of Munich and a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
Recent research shows that the high inequality of opportunity associated with low inter-generational economic mobility is shrinking America’s pool of potential inventors. In Germany – where social mobility is even lower than in the US – this dynamic is severely undermining innovative entrepreneurship.
MUNICH – Why has Germany, the land of history-making innovators like Johannes Gutenberg and Albert Einstein, not produced high-tech giants like Google, Amazon, or Facebook? Some blame the stigma associated with failure in Germany for discouraging innovative entrepreneurship. Others point to high bureaucratic hurdles to starting a business. But there is another, more worrying reason why Germany has lost its innovative momentum: its potential pioneers from disadvantaged households are not getting the chance to thrive.
According to the OECD, inter-generational earnings elasticity in Germany stands at about 50%, meaning that if person A’s parent earned double what person B’s parent earned, person A will earn, on average, 50% more than person B. With such persistent earnings differentials across generations, Germany has one of the lowest rates of inter-generational mobility in the OECD – where the average elasticity is 38% – and it seems to be declining. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
With Italy’s populist government supporting the “Yellow Vest” protests, France needs to understand how and why it has become the principal target of Italian criticism. Reckoning with this latest turn of events could help France to overcome its own internal divisions and prevent Italian-style populism from taking power in Paris.
PARIS – The support from Italy’s populist leaders for the “Yellow Vest” protests in France is a sad first in the history of the European Union. Never before has one of the six founding countries of the European project intervened so resolutely in the domestic affairs of another. To add insult to injury, Italy is supporting a movement that contains elements who clearly reject fundamental European values of tolerance and respect for democratic institutions.
Martin Feldstein, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research, chaired President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984. In 2006, he was appointed to President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and, in 2009, was appointed to President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Currently, he is on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Group of 30, a non-profit, international body that seeks greater understanding of global economic issues.
Chinese negotiators recently offered to buy enough American products to reduce the bilateral trade deficit to zero by 2024. Why, then, have US negotiators rejected that as a way to end the dispute?
CAMBRIDGE – The current conflict between the United States and China is not a trade war. Although the US has a large trade deficit with China, that is not the reason why it is imposing high tariffs on imports from China and threatening to increase them further after the end of the current 90-day truce on March 1. The purpose of those tariffs is to induce China to end its policy of stealing US technology.
Neben Robert Holzmann und zwei weiteren Kandidaten hat der Generalrat den Chef der Bundesfinanzierungsagentur nominiert
Wien – Neue Chefs und der Umbau der Bankenaufsicht, die mit rund 72 Mitarbeitern von der Oesterreichischen Nationalbank (OeNB) in die Finanzmarktaufsichtsbehörde FMA übersiedelt wird, wirbeln in der Notenbank Staub auf. Am Dienstagnachmittag hat der OeNB-Generalrat den Vorschlag des Präsidiums für die vier freiwerdenden Chefposten beschlossen – am Mittwoch soll der Ministerrat entscheiden.
Wie berichtet wird Robert Holzmann (FPÖ) Gouverneur, Fiskalratchef Gottfried Haber (ÖVP) dessen Vize. Als Direktoren kommen Eduard Schock (FPÖ) und ein bisher gut geheimgehaltener Kandidat: Thomas Steiner, derzeit Chef der Bundesfinanzierungsagentur Öbfa. Der 39-Jährige Niederösterreicher hat in Finanzmathematik dissertiert und leitet die Schuldenagentur des Bundes seit 2013.
Prime minister wants to go back to Brussels and renegotiate key parts of agreement
LONDON—British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday told her cabinet that she would seek to renegotiate the Brexit dealthat her government spent more than a year hashing out with the European Union.
The Brexit withdrawal agreement, completed in November, lays out the terms of divorce between the U.K. and the EU. But the deal proved unpopular with British lawmakers, who voted it down by a historic margin earlier this month.
In an effort to quell dissent within her own party, Mrs. May says she wants to go back to Brussels and renegotiate key parts of the deal, in particular the so-called Irish backstop, which many in Mrs. May’s party fear would lock the U.K. in a customs union with the EU. The backstop was agreed as a legal means to avoid a hard border emerging in Ireland after Brexit. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
US President Donald Trump has clearly met his match in the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, who clearly flummoxes him. Trump has never had to deal with a woman as smart, dignified, and tough as Nancy Pelosi.
WASHINGTON, DC – Whoever explained to then-President-elect Donald Trump what it meant to be president – if anyone did – neglected to tell him that on occasion a president loses a policy fight. That person also forgot to explain to the US president-in-waiting that making a big promise he might be unable to keep required him to figure out how to prevent his most ardent followers from turning against him when he failed to fulfill it.
Sloppy job preparation, together with Trump’s distorted personality, led to the near-paralysis of much of the federal government for 35 days, the longest such period in US history, hurting around 800,000 innocent employees and ultimately humiliating a president who sets great store by being seen as strong. But, like most bullies, Trump occasionally reveals his inner weakness. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Föhrenbergkreis Finanzwirtschaft 
BERLIN – The clock is ticking toward March 29 and the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Whether Brexit turns out to be “soft” or “hard,” the UK is set to endure a bout of severe economic turbulence. But Britain has survived much larger crises and will overcome this one at some point. For me, the real question is what Brexit means for the future of Europe.