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COVID-19 Leaders: Listen to the Women
By Shlomo Maital
I’ve written this before – but now, today, with the coronavirus raging in the US and EU – it bears repeating. Women have done far far better than men, as national leaders in the fight against the pandemic. Question is – why? *
* see Arwa Mahdawi, “the secret weapon in the fight against coronavirus: women”. The Guardian, April 11 2020.
* Tsai In-Wen, a former lawyer, Taiwan’s first female President elected in 2016, has effectively limited the pandemic in her country, from the start.
* Jacinda Arden has virtually eliminated the coronavirus in New Zealand and won resounding re-election, with a parliamentary majority.
* Angela Merkel, lame-duck German Chancellor, has been a voice of calm and reason, in the face of neo-Nazi demonstrations in her country. She is herself a scientist, and not only listens to the science but truly deeply understands it.
* Denmark, led by PM Mette Frederiksen, and Finland, led by PM Sanna Marin, have both done well in limiting the pandemic in their countries.
* As of 27 September 2020, Norway has performed 1,034,670 tests and reported 13,741 confirmed cases and 274 deaths. A senior Norwegian Institute of Public Health consultant said one of the major reasons why the mortality rate was significantly lower than in other European countries (such as Italy, Spain, the UK) was the high number of tests performed in Norway. Erna Solberg has been Norwegian PM for over 6 years.
* Iceland joins Taiwan, mong a group of countries which adopted a cooperative strategy early on in the pandemic, bringing together multiple organizations to tackle the challenges in containing COVID-19. Katrín Jakobsdóttir is erving as the 28th and current Prime Minister of Iceland since 2017.
Seven brilliant women, who have led their countries to safe shores. Concidence? When the three biggest failures in controlling the pandemic were led by men: Trump (US), Bolsinaro (Brazil) and Johnson (UK)?
I could list some speculative theories about why women have been far more successful than men in controlling the pandemic crisis.
But I leave it to the reader. Because – you, dear reader, know why.
The EU is back – the US is not
By Shlomo Maital
The Brexit fiasco generated enormous pessimism about the future of the European Union. There was talk about Italy leaving the EU, after extreme elements there broached the idea, or even Netherlands, which resents handouts to spendthrift EU nations.
Well, the EU is back. Here is what the Financial Times reported on the bailout deal struck yesterday, after four long days of meetings, wrangling and compromise:
“EU leaders have struck a deal on a landmark coronavirus recovery package that will involve the European Commission undertaking massive borrowing on the capital markets for the first time. After days of sometimes bitter debate, the bloc’s heads of government agreed on a €750bn package aimed at funding post-pandemic relief efforts across the EU. The deal was announced in a tweet from Charles Michel, the European Council president at 05.31am (CET) on Tuesday and was hailed by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, as a “historic day for Europe”. The recovery fund centers on a €390bn programme of grants to economically weakened member states — a significantly smaller sum than the €500bn package originally proposed by Berlin and Paris in May. Leaders also signed off on the EU’s next seven-year budget, which will be worth €1.074tn. The deal, orchestrated by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Mr Michel, is the fruit of marathon negotiations under way in Brussels since Friday morning. The summit was the second longest in the bloc’s history, falling just shy of the record set at a meeting in Nice in 2000.”
Once again, Angela Merkel, the lame-duck Chancellor of Germany, long after she announced her retirement, has returned to bring together disparate EU elements – from the autocratic Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, to the frugal four northern nations.
Smaller frugal nations won an agreement to increase their rebates from the EU — Austria’s annual reduction will be doubled to €565m a year ($644 m.) compared with previous proposals, while the Netherlands’ rebate will jump to €1.92bn ($2.2 b.) from €1.57bn ($1.78 b.) .
Contrast the ability of the fraught wrangling 27-nation European Union, moving to help the poor nations among it, with the hopeless helpless United States, where a) President Trump dumped responsibility for battling the pandemic on the 50 state governments and their governors, and saw as a result a horrendous second wave emerge, and b) led Republican opposition to provide financial help to state governments, while pressing them to re-open schools on Sept. 1, without the money it would take to do so safely.
A New York Tmes Op-Ed asks, which major nation will emerge strongest from the pandemic? Not the US. And no, not China. Answer: Germany, the enlightened leader of sanity and compromise in the European Union.
Learning from Angela Merkel
By Shlomo Maital
It was all over for Angela Merkel. She announced her retirement as head of the Christian Democrats, in Germany, and more or less disappeared as Chancellor.
And then – came the pandemic. Writing in the New York Times, Anna Sauerbrey * explains how Merkel is hugely popular, her party leads by far in the polls – and Germany has weathered the pandemic far better than the US, for instance, where President Trump, a born misogynist, persistently mocks “Angela”. [The New Yorker reported: The first Trump-Merkel encounter in the Oval Office began with almost comically awful optics: Merkel offered a ceremonial handshake for the cameras, which Trump seemed to rebuff. After the photographers left the room, Trump reportedly announced, “Angela, you owe me one trillion dollars.”].”.
Here is a selection from Sauerbrey’s piece: “Now, in early July 2020, Ms. Merkel is riding high. The country, with a notably low fatality rate and a high-functioning test and trace system, has contained the pandemic — a success many attribute to the chancellor. In a recent poll, 82 percent of Germans said that Ms. Merkel was doing her job “rather well.” And the Christian Democratic Union is once again far ahead of its challengers.”
Please recall that Merkel is a highly trained scientist – a quantum chemist, someone who understands deeply both physics and chemistry. A perfect person to lead a nation through a crisis that demands deep scientific understanding.
Now, let’s assume that the United States has a President who is wise, open-minded, modest, humble, intelligent, and desperate to lead his country through the crisis in an admirable fashion. The US and Germany have much in common. Both have a federal structure – the 50 states in the US, and the German federal states. Both in Germany and the US, the state governments have major powers. The wise US President says, let’s find out why and how Germany is doing so well, and adapt its policies.
Here, the similarity ends. In the US, Republican ‘red’ states [Florida, Arizona, Alabama, etc.] have opened prematurely, triggering a disastrous wave of new infections. In Germany, Merkel’s knowledge and background gave her credibility, and she deftly coordinated policy, so that the German states followed her guidance carefully. No “Florida’s” or “Arizona’s” in Germany.
The federal government in Germany manages and directs the test and trace system, with massive resources and trained personnel. A model of excellence.
Not so in the US. And the US President? His shocking, racist speech at Mt. Rushmore barely mentioned the pandemic. Maybe, he thinks, if I ignore it – it will just go away.
The people of Germany are fortunate to have Merkel in a strong leadership position during the pandemic.
The hapless people of the United States are desperately unlucky to have Trump leading them, even though three million more people voted for his rival.
* How Germany Fell Back in Love With Angela Merkel. New York Times, July 8, 2020.
The Pandemic is NOT Over
By Shlomo Maital
The Pandemic is NOT over. We are getting farther away from conquering it, not closer. Here are two disturbing reports from Bloomberg News, a credible source:
First the United States:
“By most accounts, the U.S. has failed spectacularly at managing the coronavirus pandemic. American-made tests were first defective, then largely unavailable; misinformation about the virus was broadcast in politicized White House briefings; and lockdowns weren’t enforced quickly enough, all of which likely worsened the spread of a disease that’s already killed 120,000 Americans. Now, with restrictions lifted earlier than advised and infection rates predictably spiking, calamities suffered in the northeast and northwest are re-emerging inland. And come fall, it may get even worse. Federal officials led by Dr. Anthony Fauci warn that this year’s flu season could overburden the health care system. —David E. Rovella”
And the rest of the world:
“The number of new Covid-19 cases around the globe is accelerating, fueled by a surge in Latin America. Germany’s infection rate rose for a third day, lifted by local outbreaks, including one in a slaughterhouse. However, Beijing reported only nine new infections, a sign that a recent outbreak may be under control. Infections and deaths reported by Russian officials also flattened. The overall global surge, though, is putting a world economic recovery in greater jeopardy. “
And to make things worse: There is some evidence the novel coronavirus has mutated, and in some mutations has become more virulent and harder for the body to step.
I often hear the claim that the new cases are largely among the young, which are populating bars and restaurants and beaches, and that even though the number of infections rises, the number of deaths remains steady or declines. The danger is, as the coronavirus spreads among the young, it will mutate and become more dangerous. And we will not be prepared. Moreover, these mutations make it much harder to successfully develop a working vaccine.
Best-Practice Virus Management: Look to Germany
By Shlomo Maital
Angela Merkel
Sometimes, something happens and – we know exactly why we were put on this earth. Take Angela Merkel. Americans would call her a ‘lame duck’ chancellor, as she has indicated she will not run for re-election as head of her party, and a successor was already chosen (and then, resigned, and a new successor emerged). But meanwhile, she is still Chancellor, leading Germany at a critical time – and guess what – she gets it. [She obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989]. Listening to an ignorant, spiteful, uneducated draft-dodging American President who does NOT get, focused solely on his rapidly-decreasing chances for re-election, it is very painful, after hearing Merkel.
In part because of Merkel’s leadership, and in part because Germany is a very well-run organized country strong in science and technology, Germany today is best-practice in emerging from the coronavirus lockdown. New York Times’ Berlin bureau chief Katrin Bennhold explains why:
“….3,000 households [were] chosen at random in Munich for an ambitious study whose central aim is to understand how many people — even those with no symptoms — have already had the virus, a key variable to make decisions about public life in a pandemic. The study is part of an aggressive approach to combat the virus in a comprehensive way that has made Germany a leader among Western nations figuring out how to control the contagion while returning to something resembling normal life.”
Bennhold continues: “Other nations, including the United States, are still struggling to test for infections. But Germany is doing that and more. It is aiming to sample the entire population for antibodies in coming months, hoping to gain valuable insight into how deeply the virus has penetrated the society at large, how deadly it really is, and whether immunity might be developing The government hopes to use the findings to unravel a riddle that will allow Germany to move securely into the next phase of the pandemic: Which of the far-reaching social and economic restrictions that have slowed the virus are most effective and which can be safely. The same questions are being asked around the world. Other countries like Iceland and South Korea have tested broadly for infections, or combined testing with digital tracking to undercut the spread of the virus.
“Germany, which produces most of its own high-quality test kits, is already testing on a greater scale than most — 120,000 a day and growing in a nation of 83 million. Chancellor Angela Merkel, a trained scientist, said this week that the aim was nothing less than tracing “every infection chain.” That high level of testing has helped her country slow the spread of the virus and keep the number of deaths relatively low. More people in Germany now recover from the virus every day than are infected by it. Every 10 people infected with the virus now pass it to seven others — a sharp decline in the infection rate for a virus that has spread exponentially.”
“Nationally, the Robert Koch Institute, the government’s central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine, is testing 5,000 samples from blood banks across the country every two weeks and 2,000 people in four hot spots who are farther along in the cycle of the disease. Its most ambitious project, aiming to test a nationwide random sample of 15,000 people across the country, is scheduled to begin next month.”
“In the free world, Germany is the first country looking into the future,” said Prof. Michael Hoelscher, who heads up the Munich study, noting that a number of countries had already asked him for the protocol to be able to replicate it. “We are leading the thinking of what to do next.” Mr. Hoelscher was co-author of what has become a widely influential research paper about how the virus can be transmitted before someone develops symptoms. “There’s no doubt after reading this paper that asymptomatic transmission is occurring,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States, told CNN on Feb. 1, three days after the paper was published. “This study lays the question to rest. Asymptomatic transmission is what has made containment so difficult because a large number of infections are not detected.”
Surprise: Germany Leads!
By Shlomo Maital
source: IMF
Quiz: Which country in the world is highly conservative fiscally, avoids deficits like the plague (oops, sorry for that one), hassles spendthrift EU nations (like Greece) for excess debt, and in general has acted like Scrooge?
You got it. Germany.
Part two: Which country has seen the extent of the COVID-19 plague clearest and acted most decisively, including massive emergency spending?
Surprise. Germany. Never would have guessed it.
Lame duck Chancellor Angela Merkel, a trained scientist, trained well in the former East Germany, was among the first to predict massive deaths, and drew scorn at the time – but she is proving right, even though Germany, for many reasons, has the lowest relative death toll (relative to the number of cases).
And now, she has led Germany to implement the most extensive, massive emergency bailout plan including huge spending, covering salaries of employers and guaranteeing emergency loans for businesses. No other country comes close. (Alas, my own country is right there at the bottom – though, of course, we do not have as deep pockets as Germany does).
According to the International Monetary Fund, Germany’s bailout package is fully 28% of GDP! And Germany guarantees 90% of emergency loans. All this, to keep businesses afloat, so they can bounce back.
But I have on caveat, or quibble. Germany: all this largesse goes to Germans. How about Italians and Spaniards? Can you spare just a small slice of your luscious pie for fellow EU countries, suffering badly? They’re waiting.
Greece Collapses – Germany and the World Will Pay the Price
By Shlomo Maital
Two trucks speed toward each other on a deserted highway. They are 50 kms. apart. Each drives at 100 kms. an hour. They have 15 minutes before they meet. Plenty of time to slow down, stop, turn off the road.
Yet they still collide head on, with massive damage.
Then, the experts debate why this happened.
This is the story of Greece. Greece joined the EU in 1981. It joined the Euro in 2000, in time to implement paper euros and coins when all of Europe did.
Here is what former European Central Bank Chief Economist Otmar Issing said, in March 2011: “Greece was only able to join the euro through deception [its budget deficit was far above permissible levels] and the currency bloc’s leaders have been “too polite” ever since to deploy adequate sanctions that could have averted the region’s debt crisis. When I worked for the ECB, I suffered every time countries didn’t meet the criteria…Greece cheated to get in, and it’s difficult to know how we should deal with cheaters. … Greece will probably be unable to honor its debts as it grapples with insolvency. The country’s repayment ability remains questionable even after the government endorsed an accelerated asset-sale plan and a package of budget cuts necessary to draw a fifth tranche of its bailout.”
It was obvious in 2011, four years ago, that Greece could not pay back all that it had borrowed. Today its public debt is an unsustainable 177 percent of its GDP. So it is obvious – much of the debt has to be wiped out, one way or another.
Are Greece and its leaders to blame? Sure. But on the principle of “sunk costs”, the history is irrelevant. The question is, what to do today, to avoid the crash? We’ve seen it coming for years, according to Issing. Yet Europe and its blind leaders continued to torture Greece, imposing ever more severe austerity. You cannot grow an economy by shrinking it. And an economy can only pay back debt by growing. Grade 5 kids know that. But politicians and economists don’t. You cannot have a single currency, the euro, without a single united banking system throughout the euro zone with one set of rules. That never happened. It never will. So the euro will become a permanent chronic ongoing crisis, and it has been for years.
Yesterday German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “if the euro fails, Europe fails.” Really? What has Chancellor Merkel done to recognize reality – Greece cannot, cannot, pay back its debt? She should have said, “The euro has failed, because I have failed, and I therefore tender my resignation. I failed to explain to the German voters, that even if we wipe out a quarter of Greek’s debts, Germany still has gained immensely”.
Who has been the big winner from Greece’s suffering? Germany.
Why? Because Greece has dragged down the external value of the euro, and the cheap euro makes German exports more competitive. If Germany under Merkel would give Greece 3 percent of all it has gained from the Greece-driven euro decline, the crisis would be over.
Some 37 % of Germany’s GDP comprise exports, or nearly $1.5 trillion (in 2014), just slightly behind that of the U.S., whose population is three times bigger. Even China exports only 23 % of its GDP. How strong will German exports be, when Greece leaves the euro, restores the drachma, bankrupts its citizens and its banks, crashes world financial markets, bashes the world economy — and then the euro soars, throwing Germany’s export-driven economy into recession?
Two trucks speeding toward each other for years. Could the crash have bene prevented? Sure, with common sense.
Was it?
No. History will be unforgiving to the hypocritical blind leaders who caused this.
Explaining (again) the Euro/Greece Crisis to Grade 5
By Shlomo Maital
Hello Grade 5’ers! Thanks for inviting me. I know my subject, money and economics, is BOOOOOring. But believe me, it is important for you to know what is going on, because when you are just a few years older, what happens in Europe will affect you. Because Europe is the world’s biggest, or next-to-biggest, economy, depending on how you add the numbers.
So here’s the deal. Europe has had lots and lots of terrible wars, with France, Germany England and others fighting each other. Someone (in France) had a great idea. What if we stopped fighting and made money together, by buying each other’s stuff? If you buy my stuff, I’m not likely to want to fight you. So they called it the European Single Market. And it worked beautifully. No-one thinks Europe will have a big fight any time soon (though, Russia may be an exception – that’s another scary story).
If you sell and buy, you use money. But there are 28 countries that belong to this European club. What a mess if you have to start finding escudos, guilders, lira, pounds, francs, and all kinds of weird money. So 19 of the countries decided they would use the same new currency, which they called the “euro”. Kind of like America, where the 50 states all use the same money, the dollar. Some 332 million Europeans use the euro.
But there is a problem. If you have the same money, you have to have the same rules for making the money. That means, you have to get all those 19 countries to agree on the “rules of the game”. You can’t play baseball or football if neither team agrees what the rules are, right? And here is where things broke down.
Some countries want there to be lots and lots and lots of euros. Some countries want just a little bit of money. Some countries (like, a little country called Greece, only 11 million people) broke the rules, spent too much money, and got into trouble, just like we do when we spend too much. Because they had to borrow and now they have trouble paying back what they owe. Other countries, like Germany, who had lots of money, helped Greece but sent Greece kind of to the penalty box. No more spending. Less treats, less goodies. And Greece didn’t like it. I wouldn’t either.
So Greece has had elections and its new leaders are making a big fuss about the punishments other countries have given it. Some think Greece might even leave the ‘club’ (the euro). That might be terrible, because then some other countries might do the same, and the whole club would collapse. So, the 27 countries want Greece to stay in the club but they do not agree how to make that happen. It’s like, do you punish the Greek people for overspending (they didn’t do it, their leaders did)? Do you forgive them, and then others might do the same? Why should other countries give money to Greece? But if they don’t, they will lose too, because the whole Euro club might come apart.
And you know, Grade 5’ers, I guess you could see this coming. If you start a game, and you have not all agreed clearly on the rules, including for things that are really strange (like, what if two guys are on second base – who’s out? What if one player’s mother comes on the ice and drags him (the goalie) off to Hebrew School? (yup, happened to me) – you’re going to get into trouble. Those Europeans, they started a club without a clear set of rules, and worse, without any way of leaving it without causing REAL trouble.
I’m pretty sure they will muddle through and keep that weird euro club going. They all have too much to lose. But boy, kids, I think you Grade 5’ers could have done a far better job. Those Europeans, they couldn’t see their fingers even if they were right in front of their nose. So, when you go to play a game, or start a club, make sure everyone knows the rules. Kids usually do. It’s the grownups who are dumb about that sometime.
7-1!! How Did Germany Do It?
By Shlomo Maital
Thomas Muller
OK, World Cup soccer (football) fans! How did Germany win 7-1 over a strong Brazilian team? Ask veteran sportswriter George Vecsey, who for decades has given us the inside story of what really goes on in baseball, and other sports.
It starts with failure. Great achievement OFTEN, perhaps even always, starts with some sort of failure. The German football team failed to advance beyond the group stage of the European championship – a huge trauma. This generated a development plan. In 366 districts of Germany, youngsters were screened, examined and picked for further training. The system produced an outstanding wave of players now in their mid-20s. One of them is Thomas Muller, the creative star who seems to be everywhere, and who combines the two key elements of creativity: discovery (being in unexpected surprising places, figuring out just WHERE to be), and delivery, the ability to convert chances into goals, like his amazing goal scored from a volley, against Brazil, after a corner kick reached his right foot.
Want to be a world champion? Find talent (including your own). Develop it patiently. Be focused. Show your people the vision. And work very very very hard. Vecsey quotes British star Gary Lineker, “football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.”
Let’s learn from them. Not everyone is thrilled by the 7-1 triumph. But all of us can learn from it, about how creativity and discipline can unite to achieve true greatness.
TIMnovate 