Irrelevant institutions

In 1997 in Germany, the President acknowledged an incapacity to act on the recognition of the urgent need to modernize the economy and society. The postwar monuments of stability and consensus were demonstrably inadequate to the challenge. Traditionally reliable unions, banks, currency, consensus-capitalism and government itself, all appeared seriously diminished in their capacity to regulate society, to sustain widespread prosperity, or to surivive intact the changes imposed by worldwide competition.