Over the past year I made the point on various occasions that the Eurozone as a whole has low inflation, balanced external trade, and negligible foreign-denominated debt, so the entire crisis is one of internal macroeconomic imbalances. In that sense, Helmut Schmidt is right, the Euro is okay - Europe is not. The macroeconomic imbalances is what the Euro rules should have focused on, not monetary convergence, and obviously the political rules of the Euro are not helping and the current rise of petty nationalistic political leaders doesn't help either.

Economics is politics by other means