“The German paradigm rests on two pillars: competitiveness and balanced budgets. Basically, this is what Germany has done for almost twenty years. The problem is that this is what is known in game theory as non-cooperative behaviour, or as the philosophers say, non-Kantian behaviour, i.e. not generalizable. If the Germans were able to compress wages and practice austerity successfully—at least from a macroeconomic point of view—it is because other countries did not do the same. If this had been the case, that is to say, if all countries had similarly cut consumption—through wage compression—and cut public spending—via the “virtue” budget, the euro area would be in a recession worthy of the ’30s.”