Originally Posted by
alexw
No, as incendiary as his rhetoric is, this isn't the problem with Greece. The problem with Greece is Germany, as it is for most of the periphery nations. The whole Eurozone economic policy is set to benefit Germany and its mercantalist trade policy at the expense of the weaker European nations. Thus Spain still has 19% unemployment and Italy has had zero growth since it joined the eurozone.
If Germany purposefully engineers its economy to run a trade surplus (which it is doing, and no its not because they produce goods people want to buy, that's just nonsense in economic terms), then other nations must run a corresponding deficit, and a deficit equals taking on more debt (German surpluses are recycled into loans to periphery nations to buy German goods). If that imbalance lasts long enough then the indebted countries economies will implode due to the unsuitability of that debt. This would not matter too much if they were not part of the Eurozone as they could utilize fiscal and monetary tools to counter German merchantalism, alas they are a part of it so they cannot, and the threat of a significant short term economic shock keeps them from leaving.
Right now Germany is a great big boil on the global economy causing severe imbalances across many nations, and it needs lancing. Unfortunately Germany doesn't want to change, and doesn't want to even admit to what it is doing.