For example, when the US urges German fiscal stimulus – as at it did in Bonn in 1978, in London in 2009, and at the G-20’s Brisbane summit in 2014 – it has in mind the “locomotive game,” in which fiscal stimulus has positive “spillover effects” on its trading partners. The global economy will do better if the major countries – each afraid to undertake fiscal expansion on its own, for fear of worsening its trade balance – agree to act together to pull it out of recession and up to speed.