Chart of the week: Germany’s business-friendly parliament

published 10 November 2017

Before September's election, entrepreneurs had been an endangered species in the German parliament. The money on offer for MPs is less than a typical company owner's salary. But now they've made a comeback, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung points out. In the last Bundestag there were just 35 company owners and self-employed MPs; now there are 76 (of 709). The proportion of entrepreneurs in parliament is now roughly the same as in the overall population. Whether that will provide more impetus for economic liberalisation, however, remains to be seen.

Viewpoint

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, says bitcoin is ideal for criminals in Venezuela; BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is also up in arms. They want regulators to do something. Wall Street never calls for more rules. It feels threatened because cryptocurrencies will make Dimon & Co. redundant by cutting out the middleman. In the case of initial coin offerings (ICOs), the companies are essentially conducting a virtual crowdfunding by giving coins or tokens out to investors directly. There is no call for Wall Street to charge millions to organise it. So let's hope its lobbying is ignored. A new financial system is developing there's no need to throttle it at birth.

Miriam Meckel, WirtschaftsWoche