A slightly more comprehensive interpretation of the crisis in Europe

This includes centrality of bank solvency to fiscal crisis (esp. in Spain and Ireland, though it only mentions the former), as well as the long-term background of the way in which German labor market "reforms" in the 2000s substantially relied on relative price rises in its Eurozone trading partners. By the way, other than its success at price competition, why is it that Germany has become the new chief representative for neoliberalism? If they get what they want, are we going to be talking about a "Berlin consensus"?

So, here we have it: Spain is being screwed into the ground so as to, supposedly, impress upon it the ‘precarious state of its public finances’. What claptrap! Spain had a surplus in its budget in 2008 and has had a debt-to-GDP rate less than Germany’s. Behind Mr Weidmann’s subterfuge hides an unfathomable truth: Having gutted the rest of the eurozone for years, by squeezing German price and wage inflation below agreed limits, German policy makers are misrepresenting the cause of the Periphery’s woes. Rather than acknowledging the need to europeanise banking supervision, and a part of the eurozone’s public debt, they are offering trinkets in the form of an above average inflation rate. Why trinkets? Because, in view of the deflation that is coming to the deficit countries, having German inflation rise above average is as inevitable as it is useless.