When, in october 2017, Wolfgang Schäuble left the Detlev Rohwedder Building for the final time after his stint as German finance minister, hundreds of civil servants, dressed all in black, waited under his window in the shape of a giant zero. Their schwarze Null symbolised the balanced budget, or surpluses, he had achieved since 2014. It was the apogee of German fiscal self-congratulation.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Fiscal Vollgas”