I'm not too familiar with the German culture. Can someone explain to me what is this "German provincialism" that they talk about? Do Germans see themselves as provincial? Does anyone else see them as provincial?
Deutsche Bank wanted to become a global player. Doing investment banking in New York and London instead of giving a small loan to Herr Müller's crankshaft oil seal factory in Hintertupfingen.
Hintertupfingen is merely a invented place which is most removed from the happenings in the rest of the world.
Being from Hintertupfingen implies being somewhat of a Redneck or atleast uneducated of what happens in the world.
German banks have traditionally operated on the local level – mortgages, financing local businesses, sometimes a medium-sized manufacturer.
The opposite model is anglo-saxon investment banking: m&a, hedge funds, HFT, leverage.
There are cultural components to both these models as well. Under the first, a good banker spends his nights drinking too much beer with the small-town mayor.
Investment bankers spend their nights doing coke with some actress in a Hong Kong rooftop bar.
(both exaggerated for effect)
Now, the story goes, Deutsche Bank felt so inferior when they watched Wall Street that their traditional, stable business was relegated to second class. They no longer cared about the low end (everyday) market.
The two problems they ran into were (a) investment banking turned out to be a rather volatile business, and they no longer had the steady income stream to support it, and (b) they probably tried so hard play blank, without actually having the necessary structures/experience etc. Cargo-Cult investment banking basically. (Fargo-Cult?)
In this documentary, the banker describes how the Germans were eager to learn from the US bankers in the late eighties and early nineties and how they did not question anything, but behaved like stupid sheep, who wanted to play with the big guys. They did not understand the products at all.
The phenomenon that makes this "German provincialism" and not just provincialism is that you can see a pattern here. You can spot it in different areas: the BND and the NSA, the entertainment industry and Hollywood, politics and the US president (especially Obama).
Germans have this schizophrenic trait, that on the one hand they think the US is totally nuts with all it's guns and broken systems and on the other hand very much care what the US does and what it thinks about them.
I really like the style that the main/only actor/narrator is filmed in an abandoned former bank's office buildung.
[x] The Federal Agency for Civic Education, FACE (German: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, bpb) is a German federal government agency responsible for promoting civic education.
> The bank's German clients were increasingly discovering the enterprising nature of international financial institutions and Deutsche had to be careful not to be left behind.
This is expounded on Page 2, but basically it led to global expansion of the bank in search of growth beyond what was possible with boring old German domestic banking.