The Euro (despicable mercantilist experiment)

I love this hold-no-punches description of the Euro by commenter Foppe.

First he describes that nl/de entered the Euro at wage rate that was deliberately low, adding to their pre-existing competitive advantages over the southern Eurozone.

Then he describes how northern banks loved the Euro project.  They had been "languishing" in credit saturated markets, then the Euro opened up lots of new lending opportunities in the south, with devaluation risk removed, but where they could still charge much higher rates.  Meanwhile, all the credit extended to the south increased purchases of manufactured goods from the north, which helped those businesses expand further.  So the north got the both interest and the manufacturing.  Then he concludes:

And now that the bubble has been punctured, they get to moralize a lot about the imprudence of ‘garlic-eaters’, when the whole thing was just a despicable mercantilist experiment of giant proportions, which functioned largely to prop up stagnant western-european economies.