Locust debate

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A political debate in Germany in April and May 2005 about a statement by the then SPD chairman Franz Müntefering is called the locust debate . He compared the economic activity of some “anonymous investors ” with plagues of locusts .

Since then, the term “grasshopper” has been considered a pejorative animal metaphor for private equity companies and other forms of equity participation such as a. in the public-private partnership model, with presumably short-term or exaggerated return expectations , such as hedge funds or so-called vulture funds .

The term and the debate have been criticized on a number of occasions, including as partially anti-Semitic and anti-American .

procedure

Program debate of the SPD

In autumn 2004, Müntefering requested an update of the party program of the SPD and in this context used the swarm of locusts metaphor for the first time on November 22, 2004 at a public lecture entitled “Freedom and Responsibility” in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung :

“We have to help those entrepreneurs who have the future viability of their companies and the interests of their employees in view against the irresponsible swarms of locusts that measure success every quarter, suck off substance and let companies break down when they have eaten it up. Capitalism is not a museum thing, it's brand new. "

The text of the speech was repeatedly published verbatim, for example in the "programs" of the SPD from January and April 2005. The animal metaphor initially remained unopposed in the media.

Interview in Bild am Sonntag

The grasshopper debate was triggered by an interview with Franz Müntefering published on April 17, 2005 in Bild am Sonntag , in which he said:

“Some financial investors don't waste a thought on the people whose jobs they are destroying - they remain anonymous, have no face, fall upon companies like swarms of locusts, graze on them and move on. We fight against this form of capitalism. "

Blacklist on stern.de

In the course of the debate, Müntefering made it clear that his comparison of locusts was directed against a (relatively small) group of companies, but did not give any specific examples. On April 28, 2005, stern.de published a list entitled “ The names of the grasshoppers ”, referring to a background paper allegedly drawn up by the planning group of the SPD parliamentary group entitled “ Market radicalism instead of social market economy - like private equity companies Recycle companies ".

The star article named the investment companies KKR and WCM , the Bank Goldman Sachs and the private equity firms Apax , BC Partners , Carlyle Group , Advent International , Permira , Blackstone Group , CVC Capital Partners and Saban Capital Group .

Mosquito cartoon in metal

The IG Metall titled the May edition of its members magazine metal with "US companies in Germany - the exploiters." The title was illustrated with the caricature of a mosquito in a pinstripe suit. Grinning cynically, she raises her top hat in the colors of the American flag ; A golden shirring tooth glistens under a long, curved trunk.

The mosquito caricatures on the title page and in the magazine aroused violent reactions because of the use of classic anti-American and anti-Semitic motifs and were compared with caricatures of National Socialism , especially in connection with the term "sucker".

"About Müntefering's Style" by Michael Wolffsohn

On May 3, 2005 Michael Wolffsohn published an essay on May 8 , the 60th anniversary of the end of the National Socialist dictatorship , in the Rheinische Post . In the last quarter, he criticized the fact that widespread thought patterns were still present during National Socialism and cited comparisons as an example in the last part of the essay Müntefering:

“60 years 'later' today people are again equated with animals which - this implicitly resonates - must be destroyed as a 'plague', 'exterminated'. Today this 'plague' is called 'locusts', back then ' rats ' or ' Jewish pigs '. Words from the dictionary of the monster , because humans are denied being human. "

Reactions

Expert Council

This article or section needs to be revised. More details should be given on the text instead of a collection of quotations . Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

The Advisory Council for the Assessment of Overall Economic Development devoted a sub-chapter to the locust debate in its annual report 05/06. There it says:

This year, the activities of private equity firms and hedge funds have attracted particular attention and have sparked discussions about the need for more extensive regulation . The sometimes very undifferentiated discussions, in which financial investors have become the epitome of short-term oriented speculators and were referred to as 'locusts', can certainly be attributed to a lack of understanding of the strategies of these market participants, which in Germany only began in recent years Have gained importance.
[…] In the foreground of the debate in Germany were the risks for companies. It was feared that short-term oriented financial investors would take a stake in a company, dismantle the company and dissolve reserves in order to then sell the stake again and leave the company weakened. This simple line of argument is economically incomprehensible because it assumes that investors can systematically destroy the value of the company and then realize their participation at a profit.
[…] The strongest fears are caused by the supposed 'social coldness' of financial investors. Specifically, it is feared that financial investors will systematically cut jobs in order to increase profits. It should be noted here that a trade-off between high returns and high employment can only exist in the short term. In the long term, only long-term, profitable companies can maintain a high level of employment or even expand it.
[…] Empirical studies of the effects of private equity, which are available for different countries, show that the majority of private equity-financed companies - compared to similar, otherwise financed companies - grow faster than average, create more jobs and a higher proportion of R&D - exhibit investments.

International reactions

On June 16, 2005, US Treasury Secretary John W. Snow commented on the locust debate : "I don't think in those terms".

Discussion and criticism

With his remarks, Müntefering pointed to what he believed to be extreme excesses of capitalism: Anonymous investors smash companies for the purpose of short-term profit maximization ; they wouldn't care about the long-term social costs .

Critics saw a contradiction in Müntefering's election campaign statements. His own party was responsible for two laws that encouraged the later criticized equity investments. The red-green federal government under Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD), of which Müntefering himself belonged for a time, exempted "profits from the sale of domestic equity investments in the operational sector" from tax as part of the tax reform 2000 . The Investment Modernization Act passed in 2003 only allowed hedge funds in Germany .

It was also contradictingly noted that Müntefering himself did business with one of the investors criticized. In 1998, as Minister of Transport, he sold the Tank & Rast motorway restaurant chain to a consortium of which Apax was also a member at the time .

Some saw the statement as a blanket reduction of any form of company participation by investment funds, even if they are financially and socially involved in the long term. The existence of a "locust list" of mainly foreign investment companies could make the business location uninteresting for foreign companies and thus endanger the German economy in the long term.

Michael Wolffsohn's Nazi comparison found little approval in Germany; it sparked outrage in the SPD. Paul Spiegel , at the time chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany , said he thought the Nazi comparison in connection with Müntefering and the SPD was absurd. Comparisons of humans with animals are chosen "fundamentally unhappy" .

Within the left spectrum, for example in Jungle World or in concrete terms , the anti-American and anti-Semitic aspects of the debate have been criticized as part of a regressive anti-capitalism . The phenomenon of the so-called "locusts" in capitalism cannot be viewed in isolation, nor can negative effects be unilaterally blamed on the companies so vilified. Rather, it is a mere expression of the general capitalist mode of production and the necessary profit maximization to which all enterprises are subject.

Concept of grasshopper

Word of the year 2005

In the 2005 Word of the Year election, the locusts made it to 4th place.

Stock brokers and securities dealers have chosen the term "locusts" as the " stock market unword of the year 2005". The term shows “a completely wrong picture” of financial investors, it is “denigrating an entire industry”; Studies have shown that “ companies financed with equity capital grow faster, create more jobs than average and generate significantly higher returns”.

Reuse of the term

On January 16, 2008, Jürgen Rüttgers , the then Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, described Nokia as a "subsidy locust" in connection with the relocation of the Nokia factories to Romania . Archbishop Reinhard Marx notes on page 227 in his book Das Kapital. A plea for people to use the expression Rüttgers' (in his eyes not linguistically beautiful and unfriendly in terms of content) against the term used by Federal Minister Peer Steinbrück , who described Nokia's approach as " caravan capitalism".

Political Risk Limitation

In June 2008 the German Bundestag passed the law to limit the risks associated with financial investments . Investors in listed companies should be obliged to disclose their goals and the origin of their financial resources once they have acquired ten percent of the voting rights. You need to state whether you are pursuing strategic goals or just want to make trading profits. The companies themselves can change the articles of association to determine that the disclosure requirements do not apply to them.

See also

literature

  • Draft of a law to limit the risks associated with financial investments (Risk Limitation Act) (PDF; 349 kB) of December 7, 2007. Bundestag printed paper 16/7438.
  • Lothar Kamp, Alexandra Krieger: Financial investors in Germany , Hans Böckler Foundation, Düsseldorf 2005.
  • Lothar Kamp: On the impact of private equity and hedge funds on the economy ; in: WSI-Mitteilungen 11/2007, Düsseldorf.
  • Angela Maier: The locust factor. Financial investors in Germany: who are they? How do you work? Who really benefits? Hanser Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-446-41140-2 .
  • Alina Potempa: Locust debates. Observations on the cultural-historical career of an insect , in: Historisches Jahrbuch 137 (2017), pp. 391–412.
  • Daniel Schäfer: The truth about the locusts. How financial investors are restructuring Deutschland AG. 2006, FAZ-Verlag, ISBN 3899811194 .
  • Werner G. Seifert : Invasion of the locusts. Intrigue - power struggles - market manipulation. Econ Verlag, ISBN 3430183235 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Program booklet I. Tradition and progress. SPD. January 2005 ( PDF ( Memento from September 5, 2005 in the Internet Archive ))
  2. ↑ Program II. Prosperity today and tomorrow. SPD. April 2005 ( PDF ( Memento of October 7, 2005 in the Internet Archive ))
  3. ↑ Picture on Sunday, April 17, 2005.
  4. ↑ nk: Debate on capitalism: The names of the 'locusts'. In: stern.de . April 28, 2005, accessed December 24, 2014 .
  5. ↑ metall - the monthly magazine , issue 5/2005, IG Metall ( online ( memento of August 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )).
  6. ↑ Tobias Jaecker : Of mosquitoes and other suckers . In: Jüdische Allgemeine , May 19, 2005.
  7. ↑ Michael Wolffsohn : May 8th ( online ), In: Rheinische Post , May 3rd, 2005.
  8. ↑ Annual report 05/06 , Council of Experts, page 463 ff ( online )
  9. ↑ netzeitung.de of June 16, 2005: US Treasury Secretary criticizes the “locusts” debate ( memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ John W. Cioffi, Martin Höpner: The party political paradox of financial market capitalism. in: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift , 47: 3, 491–440 ( PDF file )
  11. ^ Rudolf Hickel : Financial bulls instead of grasshoppers. in: Blätter für deutsche und Internationale Politik 6/2005 , pp. 647–650 ( online )
  12. ↑ Annette Beutler: Capitalism criticism: The hay (chel) scare. In: Focus Online . May 9, 2005, accessed December 24, 2014 .
  13. ↑ Peter Dausend: "Extremely harmful". In: welt.de . April 30, 2005, accessed December 24, 2014 .
  14. ^ Yassin Musharbash: Müntefering's grasshoppers: Dispute over Wolffsohn's Nazi comparison. In: Spiegel Online . May 3, 2005, accessed May 8, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Andrej Reisin: The burping insect . In: Jungle World , May 11, 2005.
  16. ↑ Locusts is the stock market bullshit of 2005. Press release of the Düsseldorf Stock Exchange, January 24, 2006 ( online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and remove it then this note. )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.boerse-duesseldorf.de  
  17. ↑ Bundestag passes Risk Limitation Act - More protection against "locusts" ( Memento from September 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: tagesschau.de