In 2008, Germany rescued Hypo Real Estate, and in 2011 Belgium, France, and Luxembourg bailed out Dexia Bank. As these cases suggest, cleaning one s own porch could have been done without much of a fuss, or at least without stoking international tension.

So it vigorously opposed all of the half hearted attempts to regulate the financial sector. As late as this past May, the FDP defended the ownership rights of US billionaire Christopher Flowers, a major stockholder in the failed German bank Hypo Real Estate, which was saved from oblivion by state guarantees worth more than 100 billion of taxpayers money.