Germans just do set great store by cash, even at Christmas, which coincides with the end of the fiscal year and, thus, bonus season. Credit is hard to come by here anyway: many cards have charges, mortgage rates remain uncompetitive and house deposits are expected to amount to at least 30 per cent. Germans tend to explain this part of their national psychology as being due to the trauma of hyperinflation in the 1920s; which, to my mind, is not entirely plausible. Surely the logical conclusion to draw from the extreme devaluation of money is that debts get smaller as inflation progresses and that bricks and mortar are about the only investment immune?