[zzleeper]

The low Euro has not been courtesy of the Greeks. They are a tiny fraction of the Eurozone, with the population of Georgia and the GDP of Louisiana.

And yes, it is ideological. Multiple Greek governments cheated their way into the Euro and their population had a super high income for years [1]. Now they want to keep their entitlement state, with early retirements, higher pensions that other comparable EU countries, and huge amounts of bureaucracy and corruption. Why should the other countries continue to finance them?

I'm sure if Germans could go back in time and realized that the no-bailout clause of Maastritch would have been ignored so much, they would have rejected the Euro altogether (at least that was the opinion of the German economists I spoke to).

Why don't just let Greece default and leave the Euro? With their lax govt and rigid markets, they are not able to deal with a single currency. Let them default, like many countries have in the past, and then they will regain competitiveness at the cost of austerity by proxy, but that seems to be the only way.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/6/28/8858727/greece-gdp-chart

[atlih]

Add Italy, Spain & Portugal, and your "tiny fraction" theory goes out the window. Had Germany just stayed with the Deutsche Mark the euro would be fine today and the Germans wouldn't have exported so much to the PIGS + Rest of the eurozone. Their GDP would be at most 10% less than it is today.

[zzleeper]

The only reason the Euro had any credibility was fue to Germany and the other conservative/prudent countries. A pigs euro would fail instantly.

[atlih]

What do you mean fail? You mean decrease in value? That would have been perfect, but it would have bankrupted German industry with it's sky high Deutsche Mark and noone to buy their goods in the countries with "no credibility"