One has to view it from the long term perspective. Germanys success doesent seem very stable from the inside. The age pyramid is similar to japan, and a working

One has to view it from the long term perspective. Germanys success doesent seem very stable from the inside. The age pyramid is similar to japan, and a working social system + lots of future retirees means, there is a lot of unseen future debt here. The main industry - the car industry is flailing and failing, by falling behind when it comes to e-mobility (except for BMW, but thats just the premium segment). Because of that perfectionism streak in engineering and a attitude against "untouchable" aka not real products, we suck at Software, which shows in particular when you look for example on the digital entertainment market. Pols have the Witcher and lots more, Czechoslovakians have Arma and lots more- what do we got? We make chips and databases- both important fields- but both closer to the german mindset. Europe is falling apart as we speak, and the inability to fix it shows, as politicians promises the glue that held it together is loosing its binding power. They should have abandoned the brussel parliament, and made a virtual parliament from all the national ones- in this way unifying the whole continent, by having a voted for legislator- that actually has something to say to those who rule the continent. Also germans democracy suffer from the same symptoms as the US- aka the partys kill it with sleeping pills. The media and they political party system) does not allow and does not show any hard debate (reason: "the citizens dont like it when mummy and daddy fight"), but this creates the impression that the voters causes are unheard and not worth fighting over for. It doesent show who fights for them, and as the eternally same faces deliver the eternally same messages (Too Long Did Not Change; TLDNC: "There is going to be a little bit of hardship, but its going to be good, once we are through it, we take the citizens problems very serious, we will take care of all your problems, as long as you dont have any.."). The state is rife with untouchable special interest groups who basically degenerated to something similar to the regressive left in the US. Lobbyism is even more of a problem- the state literally allows to hire company employees into ministry's, to write on the laws legislating themselves. While all this is going on, the citizens never get a chance to vote a head of this hydra, thus some "populist" alternative has formed, which is going to win the next Vote, and similar to France is going to rip Germany out of the heart of Europe. Which is a shame- in a world where the big bullys push you around on the schoolyard- being small has lost all the comfort remembered from the cold war. If you have all this in mind and a picture of the outside world, germanys strategy seems like a long term suicide- and what do you do if your own strategy is failing? You blindly copy whatever strategy the successful competitors employ - of course without understanding whats at its core (careful risk management). I wouldn't wonder if something similar at some point happens at the German software industry (mainly embedded electronics and databases). Because silicon valley seems so much more successful, blindly try to copy the structure and place some German engineering in it. Then wonder why you always get incremental improved products way to late, instead of brittle cutting edge. Anyway that's the state of the nation, which spawned this bank.