Germany had a problem starting after 1982. When the FdP( close to libertarians) and the CDU/ CSU ( Conservatives) were coming to power, they promised a spiritual and moral turn (geistig moralische Wende). This turn never came. Similar to Reagans policies. This was biting us hard when the wall came down. Promises of "blooming landscapes" were not delivered aside from "large blooming rapeseed fields". The government mismanagement of the former west how to integrate and build up an economy again is haunting the German pension funds and politics up to today. How chancellor Kohl could allow Merkel to gain power so fast, is completely unexplainable. She should have never been allowed into the cabinet to start with. Not with that past she had. Since her rule started, Germany is in free fall economically, defensively and socially. The real republicans are now in the younger generation of the former east, while the west is completely corrupted.