[lyudmil]

That's a hypothesis, but it seems unlikely since there are four other European economies facing identical problems - Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland. Spain in particular was a very reasonably managed economy before the crash, running surpluses and growing. So, your hypothesis would require that you attribute the problem in each of these economies to separate causes, which is probably wrong.

This is not to say that there wasn't gross economic mismanagement on the part of the Greek government, but focusing on that distracts from the real solution.

UPDATE: I'm in complete agreement with everyone pointing out that the problems aren't identical. Perhaps the question is whether, if you were to summarize the causes Euro crisis in broad terms, you ought to mention Greece's economic mismanagement first or the overall crash of the financial markets as the more important factor. My assertion is the latter, mostly echoing Stglitz's analysis here:

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdP-Fab8JX8

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ezn8Sgzxd8

[ameister14]

The problems aren't identical. They may appear so because some of the symptoms are the same, but the root causes in Ireland, for instance, are far different than in Greece.

Spain is closer to Ireland in terms of housing market effects on economic downturn, but ultimately each economy functions on a different system, so it's not entirely wrong to attribute economic problems to separate causes. There is some overlap, of course, but it's definitely not identical.

[lyudmil]

I agree the situations aren't identical, but what theory do you think best explains all the observations?

Just to be clear, my answer is: Each country's problems are rooted in the collapse of the US housing market and the resulting financial crunch. The country-to-country variations are there and they're significant, but secondary.

[aptwebapps]

I don't think the four are all the same, although there are obviously some common elements. Chief among them the easy money from the center during the boom years. But I think Greece's inefficiencies and mismanagement made a bad problem worse.