★★★★☆
Kaput: The End of the German Miracle by Wolfgang Münchau
A cultural explanation of why the German industrial economy, after being so tremendously successful for decades, has been a failure for the last decade.
— “What strikes me most is the unbelievable recklessness in German energy policy. First, the neo-mercantilists bet the house on Russian gas; then, the Greens bet the house on ending nuclear. When they came to power, nuclear still supplied 14 per cent of German electricity. They had to plug this hole, plus the hole from the loss of Russian gas supplies.”