Cheap money was the main reason this crisis started. With trade deficits even worse than the US, the UK made a pyramid game of its own economy. Exporting your money and hoping the consuming dance will go on and on. Well, they shopped till they dropped, and fell flat on their faces.
Germany may not seem to have a boom-bust economy, but with low inflation, a declining population, and structural trade and budget surpluses, Germans have seen their purchasing power increase.
As a Dutchman (Trade with Germany equals 25 % of total Dutch trade) I am relieved that German bankers and economist can keep their heads cool.
If Keynes taught us something, is that government stimuli into the economy always come late, and tend to amplify the business cycle instead of negating it.
Let's hope the rest of the 'sound' governments of Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries) will follow Germany's lead.

are akin to frat rats buying swill for the next beer bust. Krugman Dark Ale is a new brand, eligible for a twenty case load.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

The quote you've pulled from Steinbrueck doesn't make that much sense. There's a double talk quality to it that's very "conservative," as in "con." I'm no economist but reducing the VAT isn't Keynesianism, which Steinbrueck in his juxtaposition implies. It is in fact the supply side trickle down economics con that we've lived with since Reagan. There's only tinkle in the trickle.

Also, the problem with a bubble economy is that it's growth is a sham. Phony. Air. That it can be credit leveraged only multiplies the cost of the air, not its substance. A Keynesianism approach is to use labor to build things, rather than have it idle doing nothing, effectively wasting that massive resource till it grows fallow and can't be easily restored. A wasted resource is used to develop valuable entities, whether new roads, rails, public works or technologies. That's a long way from cutting taxes to wholesalers and retailers and hoping that those tax cuts will be passed on to further consumption and thereby production.

Steinbrueck has equated what Naomi Klein accurately describes as "shock doctrine" into Keynesian economics. But they're not even vaguely related. It's the old rip off of protecting the public under the guise of an emergency.

We're seeing the bullshit right now with the screwing of union auto workers over sums of money that are almost trivial in comparison to the sums that are still being tossed at thieving financial barons. There's nothing related to Keynes in any of that. It's the same corrupt class war that got us here in the first place.