If you want to. But you don’t want to, so you won’t. Despite a falling inflation rate and all the coaxing from the outside you want, Germans “can’t get over their stingy ways and fiscal paranoia to boost spending” (they don’t seem to mind if everybody else out there does the spending for them though).

“Germany seems to be preparing instead to further cut back on spending. Unlike most Americans, Germans pay their credit card bills in full at the end of every month. Only 39% own their own houses or apartments, compared with two-thirds of Britons and Americans. Only about 10% of Germans invest in the stock market, compared with half of all Americans.

Last year, Germany expanded public spending meant to stimulate growth, but at the same time it imposed a constitutional requirement to bring the deficit down to below 0.35% of GDP by 2016, a goal critics describe as unrealistic and unnecessary.

All of this contributes to the impression, shared by Germans themselves, that a strong strain of frugality shapes the national psyche.”