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It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what needs to happen. Indebted consumers, such as Americans and Brits, need to save more. More frugal consumers, such as Germans and the Chinese, need to spend more.  Data out yesterday suggests that we are getting half of that requirement right, but other data is more worrisome.

The big fear, of course, is that Anglo Saxons become more Germanic and start saving more, and the Germans don’t change. For the global economy to avoid some kind of melt-down, we need a bit of both. Sure, some people have been living beyond their means, and that can’t continue. But others have been living way below their means, and that too must change.

For China, I remain quietly optimistic that, bit by bit, its consumers will spend more. Chinese saving will fall and consumption will rise.

In Japan, there is evidence that the switch is gaining ground. The economy of the rising sun recently posted its first annual balance of trade deficit since 1980. Okay, the earthquake was a partial explanation for this deficit, but there were other deeper factors that will not go away for many years. It does seem as if Japan is about to contribute to global trade as a net importer.

But in Germany, I see a problem. I don’t blame the Germans themselves, but the fact is that the cultural attitudes in Germany – in part created by its experience during the Weimar Republic – are not conducive to a balanced global economy.

Germanic fear of inflation has often proved to be a good thing. Back in the post war years, there was this belief in the UK that there was a trade-off between inflation and unemployment – that a little inflation was a price worth paying to keep unemployment low. It was taken as matter of faith. When Tricky Dicky, or President Nixon as some call him, said: “We are all Keynesians now,” he was actually endorsing that idea of a relationship between inflation and unemployment. But during that same period, Germany took a different attitude. Keeping inflation as low as possible was the country’s top priority. And by the late 1970s it did rather seem as if the Germany model was better. When Margaret Thatcher moved into number ten, the prevailing attitude was that the trade-off between inflation and unemployment only worked in the short term, and that the consequence of decades of Keynesian economics was runaway inflation.

It was the legacy of this changed belief that was behind Gordon Brown’s decision to make the Bank of England independent.

The ironic thing is that the Germanic way has its roots in extremely market friendly economics. When Alistair Darling tried to stimulate the economy, he was accused by his German colleagues of practising crass Keynesianism.

But the truth is that just about all ideologies become undesirable when they are taken to their extremes. Keynesianism may have its faults, but it is not all wrong.

The euro area is suffering from a big crisis, and yet interest rates in the region remain higher than in the US and UK. The Bank of England has been set a target of 2 per cent for inflation. If Germany had its way, all central bankers would be obliged to target zero inflation.

Yesterday, it emerged that German inflation has risen. In January, German HICP annual inflation rose from 2.3 to 2.4 per cent. Okay that was only a small rise, and it will almost certainly fall back. But it is enough. The rise is enough to make Germany even more fearful of expansionary monetary policy, of low rates, of un-Germanic ways.

Meanwhile, data from the US revealed a rise in US savings. In December, real income growth was 0.3 per cent on the month before, but real spending fell by 0.1 per cent. In other words, US households used the small rise in incomes to repay debt.

The US increase in saving was not a bad thing. But if it is not accompanied by a rise in spending elsewhere, the result will be downward pressure on global GDP.

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