I think the Euro over the past couple of years has been defying gravity. The writing has been on the wall for quite sometime. IMHO the economies and the cultures of Europe are much too different to coexist within the same currency structure.
Germans often define themselves by what they do for a living. My impression of
Greeks (on a recent trip there) is they define themselves at what they don't do for a living. By that, I mean the Greeks seem to equate success with not having to do anything....and an amazing amount of them (that I met), don't seem to have to work.....regardless of age. One thing I heard about while there was that the
some of the technicians working for the phone company actually contracted out their duties to Albanians who actually did the work. Of course the Greek tech. still got his pay, benefits, holiday pay, etc. My Greek brother in law laughed and said they were using their head in a"management" roll. I'm sure he realized the absurdity of the situation, after all, if the Albanians were capable of doing the job, why not fire the Greeks and get the work done for far less. I thought this was a particularly good story that illustrates the "problem". Symbolically, the techs are the Greeks and the Albanians are the Germans....the benefits of the Germans hard work results in a high quality lifestyle for the Greeks. Much of the increased wealth in Greece over the last thirty years has due to their inclusion in the Euro zone. In real estate alone, you needed to be Greek to own real estate, and that put a lid on it's value. After joining the EU, laws excluding non-Greeks from owning property were eliminated and caused a radical inflation of it's value. Not surprisingly, many millionaires were created in quick order.