Dhe Federal Chancellor fears “social explosives” in the event of a permanent failure of Russian gas supplies. The Federal Minister for Economics and Climate Protection warns of a “breaking test that we haven’t had for a long time”. The employer president sees the Federal Republic “before the biggest crisis the country has ever had”. A former prime minister and EU commissioner gloomily predicts a “war and scarcity economy” for December.
Some people who otherwise see the globe burning because of climate change worry about the devastating consequences of a Siberian winter in Germany. Meanwhile, contemporaries sit on talk shows who, lacking any military expertise but with a pompous expression, think they know the outcome of the war in Ukraine, while numerous real experts do not consider the outcome to be predetermined. In Moscow, one should at least toast to these and similar statements from Germany with Krimsekt.
Acceptance of higher gas prices
For weeks, representatives of the SPD and the Greens in particular seem to have been caught in the fear that disgruntled citizens want to migrate in droves to extreme parties. Recent polls give a different message: a large majority of the population is willing to accept higher gas prices in the face of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Most people probably realize how much the political and economic coordinate system changed on February 24, 2022.
Of course, the challenges must not be downplayed. The world economy is in a fragile situation; the medium-term need for change in the German economy also appears enormous. But the government can have more confidence in the population when it comes to dealing with crises. After the outbreak of war, the time was not used optimally to prepare the country. “Fear is the sand in the machinery of life,” as the saying goes. Germany can no longer afford any more sand in its machinery. Neither reckless nor fearful – that should be a way of dealing with crises.
