Eamonn Fingleton explains why the German model has held up even as so many other major economies have collapsed.
American and British commentators have told three stories about the German economy over the past decade, all of them derogatory. Articulating a standard conservative view, Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in 2006 characterized Germany’s performance as “lastingly poor.” In a similar vein, Jude Blanchette, blogging for the libertarian Mises Institute, predicted in 2003 that nothing but “rot and indolence” lay ahead.
Another version of the indictment states that even though Germany was once an economic powerhouse, its best days are over. Thus in 2003, Larry Elliott of The Guardian reported that the German economy had “sputtered to a virtual halt” and, in the view of many, had succeeded to Britain’s 1970s-era role as the “sick man of Europe.”