There was a good documentary about the financial crisis and the banking crisis from the view of a former German banker called Master of the Universe [0] (has been on public television, but I was not able to find it from a quick search).

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.

[0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3129484/