A NEW ERA BEGINS WITH US

The year 2024 will soon be over. Germany is deep in recession, leading industrial companies are in crisis, mass layoffs are imminent. Medium-sized and smaller companies are struggling with bureaucratic madness and high taxes, the number of bankruptcies is constantly increasing. And while the state and administration continue to grow, more and more well-educated, young people are leaving the country. This is called “brain drain”. Large companies are withdrawing from Germany, we are no longer attractive enough. It is dark and mostly windless outside, hardly any energy is flowing from renewables, electricity is becoming more and more expensive. A 10 to 15% degrowth party seems to have succeeded in steering the once leading industrial nation in the world towards an emerging country in just a few years, ruining entire sectors of the economy that others would be proud of. And as if all that were not enough, they are crowning their economics minister as candidate for chancellor as if to mock them.

Where incompetent politicians, the Greens, the media, the cultural sector and the churches have declared themselves saints, Germany is now fed up: 4-day week, home office, laws, regulations, rules, reporting obligations, administration, citizen’s allowance, attitude instead of performance, gender scientists, registration offices, NGOs and cannabis legalization. The mother of all social benefits lives in our country, Europe’s largest refugee camp at the former Tegel airport costs €500 million a year, 5,000 people are housed there, very few of them work, while 1,000 employees look after them every day. Even in December 2024, our borders will still be largely open, but our Christmas markets will be fenced off.

It is the time of revelation, after the era of Merkel, Scholz, Habeck, Baerbock, Faeser, Paus and Lauterbach. An era that wanted to force citizens to see illegal migrants as recipients of a duty to deliver, corona lockdowns as freedom and a man as a woman after a mere declaration of intent. And everything to the right of Angela Merkel was brought closer to Hitler. Instead, they courted a cult figure of the climate movement who today encourages hatred against Jews on the streets. Always with the oh-so-German moral finger raised, even towards the rest of the world. With a big mouth, as the Berliner would say, but with very little behind it. But with an unbelievable waste of taxpayers’ money, for which no one is held accountable in the end. Like with the €700 million subsidy for the Northvolt battery factory, which is not insolvent, but just “doesn’t have enough money anymore”. The moral world champion Germany wants to set a “good” example everywhere; when it comes to national debt, for which our children are liable, it is no longer so strict.

Let us just imagine what an attractive country we could live in today if economic and political reason had prevailed in the years after 2015. All real refugees would certainly benefit from this, not to mention pensioners and children.
Instead, however, the CEO of Ryan Air, Michael O’Leary, says to the federal government, “Your arrogant way is f**ing over,” and in doing so sums up the disaster in his own unique way.

Let’s hope that by the new year at least most people have heard the shot and woken up. A crisis can be good and is always an opportunity. And the people here in the country could do so much more if they were only allowed to do it. With more personal responsibility, more recognition of achievement and more common sense. The state, which is intrusive with countless laws, regulations and guidelines, must withdraw from people’s lives and concentrate again on its core tasks such as education, infrastructure, internal and external security and law and order: If it does that right, it already has enough to do. “As much market as possible, as much state as necessary,” once said Karl Schiller, Federal Minister of Economics from 1966 to 1972. He was right and it is not for nothing that, along with Ludwig Ehrhard, it is today considered the guardian of our market economy.

So let’s look forward from the past and roll up our sleeves. Let’s take back our great country.

With that in mind, I wish you a wonderful Christmas.
And recharge your batteries, we are all needed.

Ernst-M. Ehrenkönig · CEO & Managing Partner