[x0x0]

Europe doesn't have neoliberals? How else do you explain post 1990 economic policy?

TheOtherHobbes isn't discussing rules or laws, but merely the current and recent economic structure. Germany net exports. Therefore, without floating currencies, only one thing may occur: someone must borrow money. You write about this -- "a country with a long history of ignoring debt" -- as if it were a moral claim, rather than an accounting identity.

Where Greece not in a currency union, they could have gradually restructured, as drachmas depreciated against foreign currency, or they were forced to borrow in a foreign currency. Their problem is that the EU is set up, by design, to actively fuck less productive southern states. States, whether states in a union or independent states, either need their own currency in order to accommodate differing productivity levels, or high productivity net exporters must accept permanent subsidization (as northern / coastal states do for the American south) of less productive states.

The simple fact of the matter is that the ECB has long acted in a way that favors Germany while the German government has carefully avoided explaining to Germany the consequences of running an export economy inside a currency union. Now that they have had 20+ years of economic success as the outcome of the union, they wish to duck the consequences.