Doesn't this sound familiar?

Germans have less faith in their political system than at any point in the post-war period, "mainly due to what they see as a weak response to the financial crisis, a poll published Sunday showed."

About 70 percent of respondents said they did not feel they could count on political or business leaders, the education system or the social welfare network, the study for the Bertelsmann Foundation indicated.

Nearly one in two said they questioned representative democracy as a political system.

"Even the social market economy is far from being seen as positively as it once was," opinion researcher Peter Kruse, who carried out the study, said of Germany's system of free markets with a strong social safety net.

Costly government packages to rescue crisis-hit banks and shore up the auto industry with subsidies for trading in heavily polluting cars for newer cleaner models were seen as inadequate to revive the slumping economy.

And the poll found an €8.5 billion ($12.2 billion) tax relief package passed by parliament this month had unsettled Germans at a time of record public debt.

Germans hoped to see more investment in easing the burden on families, education and renewable energy.

-------------------------
One poster at the story eerily echoed sentiments of many Americans about their government.

Not the political system is the problem, the politicians that currently represent this system are what people have lost faith in.

Old, tired, idealess , unflexible and absolutely occupied with themselves.

Thats what i see when i look into the Bundestag.

The Bertelsmann Foundation conducted the survey. They also produced a report on American religiousity, "America's religiosity unique among industrialized countries." That's something you will never read in the New York Times.