Is German (and Japanese and Chinese) frugality the problem?

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Martin Wolf writes in today’s FT:

What are Germany’s characteristics? It has an overwhelmingly competitive manufacturing sector; it is a chronic surplus country, with structurally weak domestic demand (ameliorated briefly during unification); and it has managed to avoid any housing or domestic credit booms. Its elite appears indifferent to the country’s rate of economic growth, even in the medium term; it is obsessed with the dangers of inflation; and it believes that countries that spend more than their incomes are somewhat immoral.

Germans claim, with reason, that their country is a pillar of rectitude. But it can be hard for ordinary countries to live with such rectitude. Of course, the rest of the eurozone has chosen this option. But countries with structural surpluses, such as Germany, compel their partners to run the deficits Germans despise.

There you have it. It’s all the fault of those danged frugal Germans. Wolf’s column is about how eurozone countries with big current account and/or fiscal deficits (Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain–but mainly Greece) are at some risk of defaulting on their debt if the recession drags on for too long. But it’s also part of the broader point Wolf has been making lately: That without overly frugal countries like Germany and Japan and China, Americans (and Brits and Icelanders and Greeks and others) never would have been able to run up so much debt and get into so much financial trouble. Their saving compelled us to borrow. There’s surely something to this, but I keep having trouble getting my mind around it. Should Squanderville really be blaming Thriftville?