Germany has had plenty of troubles in the credit crunch. Some of its of the banks were pretty stupid and, as the strong man of the Eurozone, it has been riven by rows over its taxpayers having to bail out weaker nations such as Greece.
Its impressive bounce-back, with GDP growth of 2.2% in the second quarter, the strongest since unification, is unlikely to continue at this pace and it highlights the fact that much of the rest of the Eurozone is still struggling. But it is a testament to a business culture that has respect for manufacturing, and where exporters such as BMW or Bosch do not rely on a cheap currency to sell goods abroad but on the excellence of their products.
The backbone of the German economy is its Mittelstand , a core of small and medium-sized firms, many of which have existed for generations and have proved their durability and resilience. In the mid-noughties, I met a number of them in the industrial region of Nordrhein-Westfalen, and they were rightly sceptical about the UK's apparent economic miracle and about debt-based Anglo-Saxon capitalism in general.
Our government hopes smaller firms will create jobs and help rebalance the economy. In Germany it is starting to happen: according to its chambers of commerce, Mittelstand companies want to create up to 100,000 jobs by the end of the year, and are also pushing green technology. We still have fantastic manufacturers, but that is in spite of the business culture of the past 30 years rather than because of it. Shouldn't we be asking what we can learn from the Germans?
What are the best practices which the British and the Europeans in general should learn from the Germans?