Observer
September 4, 2011
"Das Titanic Szenario" was the headline on Friday on the front page of Handelsblatt, one of Germany's most-respected business newspapers. Inside, Angela Merkel was pictured, arms outstretched, on the bow of the sinking ship, with Nicolas Sarkozy in the Leonardo DiCaprio role embracing her from behind. Days earlier Jacques Delors, a former president of the European Commission, had said the eurozone was "on the brink of the abyss".
There was similar doom-mongering in Der Spiegel. "The euro can't survive in its current form," proclaimed Hans-Joachim Voth, an eminent economic history professor from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Some countries were going to have to leave "if [the EU] wants to become anything more than just a transfer union", he said, adding that "it would be simpler to have the stronger countries veer off". And which of the 17 eurozone nations did he have in mind? Deutschland.
But could Germany seriously leave the euro? Is the common currency on the verge of collapse? "It's not looking good," said Jane Dill, a 20-year-old logistics student on a college outing to the Money Museum of the Bundesbank, Germany's National Bank, in Frankfurt. "How much longer can things go on like this? First Greece asks for help, then Portugal, Ireland, maybe Spain and Italy. What are we going to do when the next countries fail? You can't just keep chucking money at them. And what if Germany needs help? Who will come to our aid?"
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