Lindner's turning point - is the FDP leader preparing to break the traffic light?

Created: 12/30/2022, 9:47 am

By: Georg Anastasiadis

Georg Anastasiadis, editor-in-chief of the Münchner Merkur, comments on the latest push by Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) for a financial and economic change of the era.

© Kay Nietfeld/dpa/Klaus Haag

Finance Minister Lindner is putting his coalition partners to a severe test with his push for a financial and economic policy change.

Or is the FDP leader secretly preparing for the traffic lights to fail?

A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis.

The Bundeswehr is still waiting for the “turning point” promised by Chancellor Scholz.

The same is to be feared about the financial and economic policy turning point that FDP Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner is now putting in the shop window: the call for lower income taxes, fewer CO2 taxes for citizens and companies and longer nuclear lifetimes and fracking gas are for the coalition partners SPD and Greens only the proof that the FDP secretly indulges in an economically liberal satanism.

The devil eats grass before these ideas are implemented by this coalition.

The business model of the export nation Germany is under massive threat

This is a mistake.

Because the business model of the export nation is massively threatened by deglobalization, the explosion in energy prices and a shortage of skilled workers.

On the other hand, no amount of subsidy packages, no matter how monstrous, will help in the long term.

Rather, Germany needs a bang of technological openness instead of red-green dirigisme, recruiting clever minds, strengthening small and medium-sized businesses by reducing bureaucracy and reducing taxes, which are record high in a world comparison, and expanding the energy supply.

Atom?

Yes, please!

Without nuclear power, climate change will not succeed, especially not in a way that the rest of the world will happily follow Germany's example.

Lindner had all of this written down.

Does he want to break up the coalition, just as the then FDP Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff prepared in 1982 with his turning paper for the break with the SPD by Helmut Schmidt, incidentally with the same theses as Lindner today?

It's not that far (yet).

But the beleaguered FDP makes a note in the minutes in case the rendezvous of the traffic light policy with reality is unpleasant.

And: Lindner pulls the emergency brake to ward off even worse nonsense like the "energy solos" demanded by SPD leader Esken.

The fact that some “experts” appointed by this government are also calling for it does not make things any better.

George Anastasiadis