"Live within your means" was one of his opening remarks (with the unspoken Thatcherite rebuke: if you can't afford it you can't have it).
He told us the United Kingdom was the only major western economy whose credit rating has improved recently (and is still triple A).
He said that yesterday we were even able to borrow from the money markets at a cheaper rate than Germany (which presumably implies the money markets regard the United Kingdom as a safer place to put their money than even the sober, boring, excessively-hardworking Germans).
Personally I am not impressed with the view that Germany is responsible, prudent and restrained in their spending.
The PIG countries (PIG = Portugal, Ireland, Greece) are condemned as spendthrift wastrel nations, splurging on things they could never realistically afford, paying for it all with borrowed money, and now trying to default on the loans.
But the Germans have also been extravagant in their national spending, buying vanity projects at enormous cost and making (implied) promises to pay that they could never hope to keep.
The difference is that instead of pouring their money into sub-prime mortgages for very low income social groups (like the Americans) or a bloated public sector to soak up the unemployed (like the Greeks) or vast number of silly consumer goods that no-one really wants (like the Irish) the Germans wasted their financial reputation on a white elephant called the Eurozone.
They would like you to think that the Eurozone is simply a rational currency system set up by agreement with the rest of the EU. In reality it is a vanity project, of no more practical value than the British Crown Jewels in the Tower of London (beautiful to look at, of immense symbolic significance, but of no real value unless you break them up and sell the component parts). The Eurozone is the German equivalent of the Millennium Dome or the Athens Olympics or the new city of Naypyidaw.
Of course the Germans have been very careful not to actually commit themselves to paying for the Eurozone project. But everyone knows that the Euro would never have got underway unless backed by theoretical access to German financial assets. And sooner or later they will have to either back the Eurozone debts or share in the defaults (for if the Eurozone goes down German credibility in the field of financial planning will evaporate).
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