It is rather difficult to keep composure over the tenor of the elections in the US and not being impatient with the results, although tutored in civility and reminded of our own catastrophic lunges towards insanity and overbearing. I truly wish some of the theater could be dispensed with, the ugliness and the cries of anguish and the cries of victory, however much that is not the political game, just like effecting change in government never should have been piecemeal and possibly too weak to resist the revisionists and spin-doctors or aimed so finely.
The German public, while enjoying in measurable terms--and I am sure some intangibles as well--historically low unemployment and an industrial juggernaut, have avoided austerity to a large extent, and while not boastful are neither ascribing the recovery to some preternatural government influence—maybe only helping bootstraps and not roadblocks, restrictions, or appeals to unfettered greed.