Germany’s boycott of a co-ordinated European response to this crisis has become serious and persistent. Only a day after the European Commission proposed a modest European Union-wide stimulus of 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product, Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, declared that Berlin would reject any co-ordinated EU-level response on the spurious grounds that Germany would have to pay a quarter of the costs.

Yet even he knows that economic conditions have deteriorated more rapidly in the past four weeks than at any stage in our lifetimes. I expect that eurozone – and German – GDP will decline by anything between 2 and 4 per cent next year. Even the more optimistic forecasters admit that the risk is on the downside. So how come the Germans are so complacent?