[userulluipeste]

Yes, US is still juicy! It can afford to live on its own fat (accumulated wealth) and not give much of a damn to stay competitive, at least not for a while. As mentioned in another post around here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9340296 ), the natural flow of capital is towards healthy economies. (The other way around is called investment, and implies higher degrees of risk.) US was the healthiest economy for a long time and so a lot of good things flew it its direction. But usually wealth is not that easy to get. Germany? Germany only a few years ago finished paying its WW1 war indemnity! (Its WW2 arrears still pending, I presume.) Germany suffered massive destruction in war, then it suffered (at least partly) occupation and socialism for a significant period of time! Germany suffers from demographic recession (hence the low prices of real estate assets). And Germany, with all that, manages to keeping it up! Wealth will continue to flow, and you gave enough clues from where.