GRÜN CEO Oliver Grün: "Politicians lack an exit strategy for the economy"

Aachen, March 30, 2020. “The economy continues to burn down every day” is the headline of our CEO's personal guest contribution Dr. Oliver Grün about the corona crisis that the Aachen daily newspapers published on March 30, 2020.

This morning I walked through our almost empty office building. Several thousand square meters as if dead, do you still need office space or is everything now online? The corona pandemic has all aspects, and at the same time leads to a health, economic and social crisis. But can I write something about it from an entrepreneur's point of view? Then I would have to weigh up factually, but that is dangerous. There is already a groupthink, it almost seems like a patriotic duty to join the proponents of the drastic measures of the state. Show solidarity, avoid contacts, protect risk groups, avoid the collapse of health systems like in Italy or Spain. I feel very positive. Lucky, because critics and dissenting opinions are quickly labeled as emotionless and lacking in solidarity by our quickly aroused society.

And then my other sense of responsibility as an entrepreneur comes in between: The necessary measures to curb the spread of corona act like an economic ban on transactions. We are shutting down our entire economy in a unique post-war process and we want to pay for it with the taxes that are paid by the same economy. That sounds like a branch that you are sawing on. Incidentally, medium-sized companies with 50 to 250 employees are excluded from the celebrated economic stabilization fund.

Still quite crisis-proof

I breathe a sigh of relief because as a digital entrepreneur, my companies are still quite crisis-proof, then without funds. According to calculations by the Ifo Institute, every additional week costs around 50 billion euros and puts hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk even with a partial standstill of the economy. I would find it irresponsible to maintain this massive shutdown for more than a few weeks. Is there a risk of greater damage from the extinguishing work than from the fire? Why does nobody say that, we have to find a balance with all the sympathy for the now almost 300 corona deaths in Germany? For what reason are we in fact governed by virologists who have no idea about politics and economics? As an entrepreneur, I miss any form of exit strategy communicated by politics. How and in what steps, under what conditions do we get out of the shutdown? Where is the trade-off between the collapse of the health system and that of the economic system? Even if we don't know how the measures will work, we still need to know the numbers from which we can let the economy breathe again. This is called the goal. But there is no target, for example the number of new infections per day that must be undercut. And the Chancellor announced today that it was "not the time to talk about it". We can't really be serious to wait for Easter now and have a look in three weeks. The economy continues to burn down every day.

My consciousness as an entrepreneur still prevails when I return to my office after my tour and read on the Internet about the construction of more and more morgue tents in New York. Immediately my weighing up again. These are troubled times. All in all, we have been doing well so far with strong containment measures in Germany, although good leadership and strategy are missing. I have hope for a new departure, changed attitudes and innovations after the current corona crisis. This week, the news of an emergency ventilation pump developed by the RWTH gives me good courage for our Aachen region.