by Markus Langemann //
A conversation that is rarely held: A leading asset manager in Germany soberly assesses what figures have been indicating for years - and what this means for states and, as a result, for private assets. Dr. Markus C. Zschaber is no loudspeaker. He has been on board government flights, has been responsible for a sovereign wealth fund for 19 years and holds a stake in a bank. Numbers are screwed into the double helix in his DNA. A thousand broadcasts on n-tv and columns in WiWo. He is considered a renowned and experienced money manager and is the founder of V.M.Z. Vermögensverwaltungsgesellschaft. In our interview, he now speaks in plain language.
"So it's moving towards a planned economy." He points to a labor market with around three million unemployed, which reflects the tension at home.
Internationally, his assessment of Europe is sobering. While the USA - politically controversial but economically consistent - is mobilizing investments "of 3 trillion US dollars" by 2028, Europe has achieved "between nothing or nothing at all". Zschaber's basic finding: "Europe plays a very subordinate role in key issues of future development." He names France as a possible "next Greece" candidate in view of its debt level and reform backlog.
In terms of domestic policy, he is not holding his cards close to his chest. When asked who he trusts to provide economic leadership in the current federal government, his answer is: "no one". Instead of further program announcements, structural reforms are needed - over several legislative periods, with noticeable cuts in order to regain competitiveness. The entrepreneurial foundation is already crumbling: in July 2025, there were "25 to 30 percent more insolvencies than in the previous year" - particularly in the SME sector; many of these companies are "not coming back".
What does this mean for private assets? Zschaber puts it bluntly: "If you don't act today, you will destroy your assets tomorrow." Germans are "world champions in savings, but at the bottom of the league in asset accumulation" - an expensive misallocation in times of increased inflation. Knowledge and discipline are scarce commodities: "Knowledge is power - even more so on the capital market."
He consistently takes the signals from the government bond markets into account: Rising "risk premiums" have long since affected not only peripheral countries, but also Germany, France and the UK. In terms of allocation, Zschaber advocates real company investments, robust cash flows, international diversification along global growth axes - and a clear understanding of what is risk and what is not. He does not classify Bitcoin as a promise of salvation, but as a possible risk component within a decentralized currency system - not as a core investment.
This conversation is not about alarmism, but about taking stock: data that puts things in perspective - and a "way out" that demands personal responsibility. The sentence that remains is a simple one: "The feeling that things will go on like this is the most deceptive thing you can have."
If you want to understand precisely where Zschaber sees the levers - from the interest rate structure and credit cycles to valuation levels and specific investment examples - you will find the details in the full interview. Watch the entire interview in the Media library of the Club of Clear Words.
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One Response
Mass democracies tend to live on credit, i.e. they spend much more money than they earn. The fact that they do not build up reserves for maintenance and innovation is an additional problem. The result, especially in European countries, is a "tax state" in which the middle class is milked, and then a "debt state" when even fifty percent of the GNP is no longer enough to finance all the "good deeds". In the 1970s, left-wing theorists such as Amitai Etzioni promised us the "Golden Age", the social democratic paradise of participation and eternal prosperity for all. Americans, and also Germans like Hayek, have always seen things differently. For them, it was simply socialism or even communism. Which is not to absolve this view of error. In the end, neither the social democratic path nor the neoliberal path led to paradise. What remains in both is an underclass that has no opportunities, a middle class that is more or less milked dry, and completely over-indebted states. Only the functional castes and upper classes are swimming in money. There are countries such as Germany, which have achieved nothing in terms of broad provision because their politicians were incapable of solving the problems pragmatically and believed in the fairy tale of the "rich country", similar to France and the UK, and countries such as Norway, which have built up very few state funds, or Austria, which tackled the pension problem at an early stage. It is clear that capitalist systems such as the USA get out of the tax/debt dilemma more quickly than socially liberal ones, because the latter can only make it clear to their sheep under the dictum of losing power that the promised paradise was a pipe dream. But even in the US, it takes a Trump to do this because the Dems have the same problem as their social democratic friends in Europe. The conclusion is clear: anyone with assets must get out of the over-indebted states if they can and diversify. It is a warning sign that the largest socialist bureaucracy in the world, known as the EU, now wants to chain up the last safe haven in Europe, Switzerland!