Germany just freed up half a trillion euros to rebuild itself — and eighteen months later, the money has barely moved. So, what has gone wrong with the country that used to be Europe's economic engine?
Everyone has a favourite villain: the end of cheap Russian gas, Chinese competition, Trump's tariffs. But none of them explains why a town outside Berlin can't spend two million euros to resurface a road, even after the cash has been handed over. In this video I look at the real problem underneath Germany's economic stall — a system so built around caution and consensus that it can't move, even when it desperately needs to.
We get into the suspended debt brake and the €500 billion that won't spend, the phantom construction sites, Germany's shift from mechanical engineering to a software-driven economy it wasn't built for, the "Export World Champion" trap, and why the American alternative — pouring billions into moonshots and space-based power grids — might be the opposite pathology rather than the answer. Featuring the work and ideas of Wolfgang Münchau (Kaput), Michael Pettis, Adam Tooze, and reporting from the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg.
Is Germany's decline permanent, or is the recovery already quietly underway? That's the open question — and it's not really a German question. It's just that Germany got there first.