Yet even when I did succeed in helping them see the linkages, the political decision-making systems they had to work within were dysfunctional. Not only did they have to decide what they would do as individual countries, the nineteen countries of the European Union had to agree with each other before they could act—in many cases unanimously. There was often no clear way of resolving disagreements, which was a big problem because what needed to be done (printing money) was objectionable to German economic conservatives.
