Are you kidding? PSA, Fiat Group, and Renault also had the Euro and hence should be benefiting from exactly the same enlarged market that you claim is the reason for Volkswagen's success.
As to "lay[ing] blame 100% at the door of the borrower", my point is that the money that has been given to Greece is already gone, Greece has been technically bankrupt for a while. This is understood by everybody. The questions are twofold:
1. How do the creditor countries tell their electorate that the money's gone? The modus operandi of the creditor countries has been to drag out the default over time.
2. What to do with Greece. The creditor countries want to change Greece to make it competitive. Syriza wants to keep the rest of the EU to subsidise the status quo indefinitely.
I disagree that "Germany has benefited by far the most from euro". The opposite is true. Moreover Kohl agreed with it only because without that agreement, reunification would have been vetoed by France, which is still in some sense, occupying Germany. Nobody orced upon the Euro the rest of Europe. Various EU countries (e.g UK, Poland, Denmark, Sweden) did not join.
> Are you kidding? PSA, Fiat Group, and Renault also had the Euro and hence should be benefiting from exactly the same enlarged market that you claim is the reason for Volkswagen's success.
The point is that without the Euro, these groups were shielded from Volkswagen through the ability of other governments of using devaluation as a means of improving their competitive position.
He's not claiming they were as efficient competitors as Volkswagen, but that the Euro was a benefit to Germany to consolidate existing competitive advantages that they had due to the strength of their industry, because it prevented other European countries from shielding themselves through currency policy, and thus allowed German companies to extend their already powerful positions.
To reiterate: The claim is not that the Euro in itself created a competitive advantage for Germany, but that it allowed them to take full advantage of their economic strength.
OK, that is a more cogent explanation. However, it does not take into account (1) the exchange rates that the Euro countries used when they entered the Euro. I'd argue that Germany's DM <-> Euro exchange rate was quite uncompetitive in 1 January 1999, making German products too expensive. (2) It does not take into account the symmetry of the situation: the Euro also made it impossible for Germany to use devaluation of its currency as a competitive advantage. (3) industries that need devaluation have a serious health problem anyway. (4) Germany and Greece have almost no competing industries, so the ability to do competitive devaluation does not play a role in the competition between Germany and Greece. (5) It does not take into account the distribution of power in the ECB where Germany has the same number of votes as Greece or Malta. The first two ECB presidents were French and Italian, consequently the ECB makes policies mostly in the interest of the southern members. The fact that several German ECB members and one head of state have already resigned over crazy ECB decisions speaks volumes.
Most of these points are irrelevant to the point that was made by the commenter above, that claimed that Germany was not forced into the Euro, but wanted it because they saw it in part as a means to take away devaluations as a tool of other EU nations.
I don't know if that's true or not - I didn't follow the debate that closely - but the arguments you are giving here are either besides the point for that kind of decision, or seems like plausible concessions of a party that sees itself as strong enough to be able to win big if devaluations are taken off the table.
As to "lay[ing] blame 100% at the door of the borrower", my point is that the money that has been given to Greece is already gone, Greece has been technically bankrupt for a while. This is understood by everybody. The questions are twofold:
1. How do the creditor countries tell their electorate that the money's gone? The modus operandi of the creditor countries has been to drag out the default over time.
2. What to do with Greece. The creditor countries want to change Greece to make it competitive. Syriza wants to keep the rest of the EU to subsidise the status quo indefinitely.
I disagree that "Germany has benefited by far the most from euro". The opposite is true. Moreover Kohl agreed with it only because without that agreement, reunification would have been vetoed by France, which is still in some sense, occupying Germany. Nobody orced upon the Euro the rest of Europe. Various EU countries (e.g UK, Poland, Denmark, Sweden) did not join.