Last week I wrote a column entitled The riddle of German self-interest. To my surprise, it received a lengthy response from a senior and highly respected official of the German finance ministry. I am very grateful for this reply, because it clarifies the German finance ministry's position and raises a number of profound issues.

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I fear that austerity without end will bring about a return to the unstable populist politics the European Union was designed to prevent. That could shatter the eurozone and, with it, the EU, thereby ending the most successful attempt to build peace and prosperity in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Moreover, it is clear - and has long been so - that the responsibility for preventing that outcome rests on Germany, Europe's central power, in every sense. As Charles Kindleberger argued, in a panic, the creditworthy country has to lend freely if a fixed exchange rate system (or in this case a currency union) is to survive.

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Fiat justitia, et pereat mundus (let justice be done, even if the world perishes) is a dangerous motto.