The Emotional Support Cats in the Chancellery
The cuddling is over
At American universities, students are allowed to keep cats that emotionally stabilize them, prevent panic attacks, and shorten rumination loops when falling asleep. In the German Chancellery, DAX board members take on this role. The metaphor is more revealing than its author realizes.
The Cat Flap
Gabor Steingart, the doyen of business-friendly journalism, writes it without any irony: "The Chancellery has always had an invisible cat flap. Those who know the code get in."
Read that sentence again. Slowly.
This is not exposing a scandal, but describing something taken for granted. Of course DAX board members have direct access to the Chancellor. Of course there's a code that only insiders know. Of course those who don't belong to the club stay outside — the medium-sized business owner from Swabia, the inventor from Bavaria, the founder from Saxony. They don't have the code. They were never invited. They will never be invited.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is the self-understanding of an elite that considers itself so indispensable that it regards its privileges as natural law.
The Function of the Cuddle Cat
What exactly are these DAX board members supposed to do in the Chancellery? Steingart calls them "Emotional Support Cats" – and warns that they must not only purr but also scratch. So far, all one hears is the purring.
No uncomfortable truths. No demands for structural reforms. No criticism of wrong decisions. No pointing out grievances that harm the country.
Only: Stabilize. Calm down. Shorten the rumination loops.
The economic elite as therapeutic intervention. The CEO as cuddle cat. The supervisory board member as anxiety reliever. The executive office as wellness oasis for insecure heads of government.
What a damning indictment. For both sides.
The Numbers Behind It
While the cats are cuddling, of all people an economic advisor delivers the autopsy of the patient. Professor Veronika Grimm, quoted in the same newsletter, dissects the German economy with the precision of a forensic pathologist:
Diagnosis: Germany 2026
- Growth: 0.9% — of which 0.3% carryover, 0.3% holiday effect, 0.3% debt
- Private sector: Stagnant since 2018
- New jobs: Only in public sector and healthcare
- Manufacturing: Declining
- Economic turnaround: "We don't see any of that yet"
The diagnosis is devastating: Germany only grows because the state takes on debt. The private sector has been clinically dead for seven years. The only new jobs are created where no value is produced, only administered.
"Here things go into the public sector because a lot needs to be administered; we keep creating new regulations — supply chain law, collective bargaining compliance law — and all of that needs to be monitored."
Do you understand the perversion? Germany creates jobs to monitor regulations that prevent jobs from being created. The bureaucracy feeds itself. The ouroboros of administration.
The Question Nobody Asks
Here's what interests me: What exactly do the DAX board members discuss during their visits to the Chancellery?
Do they say: "Mr. Chancellor, energy costs are driving us out of the country"? Then something would have to change. But it doesn't.
Do they say: "Mr. Chancellor, bureaucracy is suffocating us"? Then something would have to change. But it doesn't.
Do they say: "Mr. Chancellor, we're losing ground to the world leaders"? Then something would have to change. But it doesn't.
So either they don't say any of this. Or they say it, and nobody cares. Both variants are catastrophic.
If the most powerful business leaders in the country have regular access to the center of power and still nothing changes, there are only two explanations:
First: They don't use the access for the common good, but for their own interests — subsidies, regulations at the expense of smaller competitors, favor-seeking laws.
Second: They gave up long ago and are just managing the decline — while getting their personal affairs in order.
The third possibility — that they advise honestly and are heard — is ruled out. The numbers disprove it.
Silicon Valley creates trillions in value. China builds the infrastructure of the 21st century.
And Germany? Germany creates public service positions to monitor supply chains.
The Cartel of Mutual Reassurance
What we're observing here is not government failure and not business failure. It's a system.
The government needs the economic elite for legitimation. It can say: "We're in dialogue with business." The economic elite needs the government for access, influence, planning security. Both sides benefit from the status quo.
What gets lost in the process: the country.
While the elites mutually stabilize each other, value creation migrates away. While they mutually reassure each other, the jobs of the future are created elsewhere. While they mutually assure each other that everything is under control, Germany loses touch with a world that doesn't wait.
The BlackRock Man
Friedrich Merz, the new Chancellor, was a supervisory board member at BlackRock Germany for years. The world's largest asset manager. The epitome of global financial capitalism.
One might have expected that a man with this background understands how markets work. That he grasps the urgency. That he has the courage to break up structures that no longer function.
Instead: more of the same. Tax relief that's supposed to come in 2028 — if it comes at all. Reforms so timid that even the Council of Economic Experts only predicts "1.3 percentage points growth effect over a long period."
The man who knows global finance from the inside governs as if he never understood what he saw there.
Or worse: He understood it — and draws the wrong conclusions.
The Duty to Be Candid
Steingart writes that the DAX chiefs' proximity to the Chancellor includes "also the duty to be candid." The word "also" is telling. What else does it include? Loyalty? Discretion? Complicity?
Candor is not an extra. Candor is the minimum. Anyone who has privileged access to power and doesn't use it to speak uncomfortable truths is not an advisor, but a courtier.
And we've had enough courtiers in German history.
The Cuddling Is Over
The time of Emotional Support Cats is over. Germany doesn't need cuddle cats in the Chancellery. Germany needs people who are willing to tell the truth — even when it hurts.
The truth is: The model no longer works.
The truth is: The structures are calcified.
The truth is: The elite has failed.
Not because they're malicious. But because they've settled into a system that rewards all participants — except those who are supposed to carry it.
Those who know the code to the cat flap bear responsibility.
Those who don't exercise this responsibility are guilty.
Not before the law. Before history.
Students at American universities need their Emotional Support Cats because they're young, insecure, overwhelmed by the demands of a complex world.
What's the German elite's excuse?