Clearly the German model doesn’t have all the answers. The culture that spawned many significant scientific and business innovations has a major “angst” problem at the moment.

But what disappoints me about much of what I read about US capitalism is a blind faith in the free market as the answer to everything. It seems to have a deity status, and to criticize the free market is blasphemy. Enron and co have only briefly dented this. At the risk of exposing my undergrad economics, the US software industry owes more to Keynes than it does to Friedman.

I explore this a bit more in my quaero-eurogoogle post.

I look forward to following your blog. I’m with you on the FAZ comments. Erudition is a polite way of putting it.
Regards from Germany.