The major financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, which turned into a massive sovereign debt crisis in the European Union, was merely roughly washed over in the familiar Keynesian pattern, with interest rate manipulation and cheap money, Mario Draghi: 'whatever it takes'. The price that the Germans in particular have to pay for never having returned to real money, to a free market economy, is the disappearance into no man's land in the geopolitical rankings, which is also documented by the capitalization of the stock market in Germany. It is possibly the biggest descent story of the current century.