Germany is resisting calls to drastically increase spending to help alleviate the strains of the global financial slowdown. Amazing that some nations can resist the herd-like mentality prevalent among many countries, including the U.S., that every struggling industry must receive some bailout. Germany has basically guaranteed bank loans to shore up their credit markets, and that is about it. It will be interesting to see whether their economy recovers faster than other European economies, and whether they suffer more or less of a recession as well. Other nations would be smart to realize that certain failing companies need to fail, not be propped up. That is how the market works. We need to learn the lessons of Japan in the early 1990s (see previous post on this subject).