Deutsche Bank CEO Sewing summarizes economic warnings in keynote speech, but suggests mediocre solutions

This speech might be a bit unusual for a Deutsche Bank CEO! Mr. Sewing is plain speaking and gives a sober, if not gloomy, outlook!

However, he is dead wrong to repeat that ideological nonsense of "climate crisis"!!! A typical German myopia!

Unfortunately:

1. He also repeats the false mantra of concerted effort (konzertierte Aktion). A German fairy tale myth governing Germany since the 1960s. When will the Germans kick this bad habit! Did not Hitler ruin this bad idea (e.g. Volksgemeinschaft, which dates back to WW I) entirely!
2. He promotes the naive idea of bigger is better in terms of European banks to counter e.g. U.S. banks

He forgot to suggest that Germany needs to expand economic relations with India to compensate for China.

"... a time that is more challenging than anything I have experienced in more than 30 years of banking.  While the Covid pandemic proved to be a temporary shock to the world economy, Russia's war against Ukraine has destroyed a number of certainties on which we built our economic system over the past decades. 

The brakes have been applied to globalisation and, in the face of major geopolitical tensions, it is unlikely to pick up its old momentum any time soon. 

As a result, many seemingly perfect global value and supply chains have been disrupted.  

The workforce, which for a long time was thought to be available without limit, has become a bottleneck factor worldwide. 

At the same time, electricity and gas have become scarce and extremely expensive. Energy is set to stay an expensive commodity in Europe for some time. This represents a structural competitive drawback and it is a threat to our economy. In the long term, we will need to respond with structural solutions.  ...
Right now many people still have their savings to fall back on to pay the higher prices; many companies are still sufficiently financed. But the longer inflation remains high, the greater the strain and the higher the potential for social conflict.  ...

In my view, there are three main lessons:  

Firstly, we have seen how dangerous it is for us in Europe to become too dependent on individual countries or regions. At the moment the main focus is on energy and raw material imports from Russia – and rightly so. ...

That is not enough, though. When it comes to dependencies, we also have to face the awkward question of how to deal with China. Its increasing isolation and growing tensions, especially between China and the United States, pose a considerable risk for Germany.  

China is a cornerstone of our economy. About 8 percent of our exports go to China and 12 percent of our imports are from the country. More than a tenth of the sales of all DAX-listed companies are from China. ... Reducing this dependency will require a change no less fundamental than decoupling from Russian energy.  

At the same time – and this is my second lesson – we need to tackle the climate crisis with much more resolve than to date.  Climate change is already causing damage of gigantic proportions. ...

The third lesson, I believe, is that we have been under the illusion for the past 30 years that we could live forever in an ever more globalised world with no major conflicts and with steady growth.  ... we have been acting as if the world was on its way to becoming one big village where everyone is interested in economic cooperation because, after all, everyone benefits from it. That has stopped being the case for some time now, though. 

The truth is that 30 years of presumed calm will now be followed by a period of heightened volatility with economic uncertainty, regular crises and geopolitical conflicts that are also likely to drag on for decades. ...
We will only succeed through a concerted joint effort, with politics, business and society all working closely hand in hand.  ...
And sooner or later we will also need consolidation, not nationally, but Europe-wide. Size counts in banking – and if we don't want to hand over the playing field to the Americans, Europe must create the right conditions for big banks. ..."

Christian Sewing's keynote at the Handelsblatt Banken Summit 2022