Critical throughout Germany's development has been the role of the state in suppressing consumption and increasing savings to provide adequate pools of capital for large-scale industrial investments, while also providing transfers to smooth, rather than block, such policies. As such, the mantra of Erst Sparen, Dann Kaufen (first save, then go shopping) to save and invest before consuming—a parsimony that Smith would have applauded—formed the austere core of German economic thought long before the 1930s, when ordoliberalism appeared.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 359