Germany is in a bizarre fiscal mess of its own making

Germany mAY pride itself on its fiscal prudence, but over the past fortnight it has been in the grip of a bizarre fiscal panic. At the heart of the drama lies the much-revered “debt brake”, a constitutional clause that limits the country’s budget deficit, but which the government has resorted to circumventing through a series of special funds. On November 15th the country’s constitutional court ruled that one such wheeze to finance €60bn ($66bn), or 1.5% of GDP, in climate spending was illegal, jeopardising all the financing done in this way.