There is a great editorial piece on Focus today, with the title: 'Germany Is Threatened with Corona Sclerosis'. I strongly recommend a read of it....written by Clemens Fuerst.
The piece dwells on this fact that Corona isn't exactly going away, and will be facing the German business sector for several years. Some will survive....some won't.
On short-work (the program to provide German state funding for people who aren't working 160 man-hours a month at this point, but enables them to get around 80-percent of their normal pay-check)....it was passed through this week, and made concrete for up to two years (March 2022 is now the end-point).
Will short-work be screwed with again and given another whole extra year by the end of 2021 (after the national election) because the economy has not recovered? I'd give it better than a 50-percent chance of occurring. It's very likely that a quarter of the population will still be doing part-time work even in the summer of 2022.
Can the government bundle up that much money and carry the nation through 2022 and maybe even 2023....waiting for normalcy to return? With no doubt, Germany can do it.....but it'll require bank loans somewhere down the path, or massive restructuring of the economy (more taxes on the wealthy).
What's curious to me is all the various angles that are now affected. If you had five-million Euro, a 5-star script and a couple of big-name German actors ready for a movie production.....can you assume that the theaters will open to such a degree....that you'd get a return back on your investment? Current answer? No.
If you had 100k Euro and a passion to go and open up your own sports bar in Essen....would you go and do this in the current landscape, with limits on patrons and customers? No.
If you had two-million Euro and a chance to buy a highly under-valued hotel 3-star hotel in Hamburg, with occupancy currently at 20-percent in the Covid-era....would you do it? No.
The passion for risk? It's simply not there.
There are various empty 'fronts' around Germany which would make great pubs or cafes....but would you go and use your life-savings in this time, to take on a risky venture? Probably not.
To be blunt, I don't see anything changing much in the next twelve months to reverse this whole trend.
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