By the way, I think we will very soon need to put together a German mega-diary, that kind of summarizes all the recent diaries on this subject, so we can try to get some kind of overview of Germany, where it is, and where it is going (or could).
Thanks again for your informative work!! "Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
First of all, our then-Chancellor Kohl decided to pay for the unification mostly by raising credit, a practice that has been hugely popular ever since. Of course, the next generation will ultimately have to pay for that and we're already paying.
Secondly, while the rest of Europe went through some serious restructuring in the 90s the German government was asleep at the wheel, because the unification caused a boom in the economy. There was a huge market of 16 million people to conquer, after all.
There's potentially plenty of material available - Sweden, the Netherlands, Ireland, for example, are all countries that have recently faced economic crises and recaptured economic dynamism without totally succumbing to neoliberal nostrums. We might examine what lessons they hold for the bigger economies. We might also investigate what left policy intellectuals have come up with.
Also, Jerome had a bunch of issues that he planned to write about.
