Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, turned the tables on her international critics yesterday by accusing the US and other governments of making “cheap money” a central tool of their economic management, thus planting the seeds of a similar crisis in five years.

“Excessively cheap money in the US was a driver of today’s crisis,” the chancellor told the German parliament. “I am deeply concerned about whether we are now reinforcing this trend through measures being adopted in the US and elsewhere and whether we could find ourselves in five years facing the exact same crisis.”

It is the first time Ms Merkel has confronted her critics head-on. There have been calls from outside the country for Germany to beef up its fiscal support to the economy, in part because its vast current account surplus and healthy public finances give it more room for manoeuvre than other European nations.