In sum, postwar Germany prospered with austerity-focused ideas of a particular type at its core. Germany both possesses and professes a liberalism that embraces the state and transforms it. In doing so, it does the same for austerity. The fact that ordoliberalism, ordnungspolitik, and the rest, are all about rules means precisely that good economic governance is not about spending. If the rules establish a framework within which prosperity is established through the enhancement of competition, then the supply side of saving and investment, rather than the demand side and consumption, still rules the day. Ordoliberalism may have modernized liberalism, but its economics in many ways remain as classical as Smith and Hume.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 373