Hi Aemilianus, Thanks for the comment. Certainly trying to be fact-based--writing very colloquially and I apologize if I seem to have been assigning evil intent (although I do think corporations and financial institutions in both Germany and the USA are aware of some of these problems but benefit from them, so generally aren't interested in analyzing or solving them).

As for Germans being "naturally fiscally conservative," in fact the German household savings rate historically (pre-Covid where everyone's went way up) has been 10%, the USA's around 5-7%. In fact there is very little difference (just 3-5% of income). I'm using OECD data here:

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-savings.htm

The reason, I would venture, that Germany has a much "thriftier" reputation than the US is because Germany runs a NATIONAL trade surplus, and the USA a deficit, and people assume that means how much INDIVIDUALS/HOUSEHOLDS save is what's relevant. But as a matter of fact, as we see above from the OECC data, that there is very little difference in savings rate between German and American individuals/households. Thus the causes of the surplus/deficit must lie elsewhere, besides being "fiscally conservative" or other moral virtues.