> I read it as an alarmist attempt to goad reluctant
> parties to reach a solution, not doomsaying.
Ok, I'll take the other side of that. I think there's a real, non-negligible chance that the Euro will collapse, and soon. It's a fairly new project, it was done (at the time) for all the wrong reasons, and it has shown itself to not only not make the zone more resistent to upheaval but rather more succeptible to the kinds of instabilities that, in the past, have led directly to devastating continent-wide wars.
I'm not rooting for it, but I think Krugman is probably right when he wrote recently:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/oh-ecd/
>> Future historians will look back in astonishment
>> at the Great Pivot of 2010, in which all the Very
>> Serious People on both sides of the Atlantic- and,
>> sad to say, in both parties in the United States -
>> decided that in the face of high unemployment, weak
>> growth, and low inflation, what the world really
>> needed was austerity.
And the day before:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/the-euro-curse/
>> [...] You can see the big divergence [between Finland=in Euro;
>> and Sweden=not in Euro] as the euro crisis has exploded.
>> But I think it's interesting that Finland and Sweden started
>> to diverge back in April. What happened then?
>>
>> Ah, yes - the ECB started raising rates. And as Rebecca
>> Wilder points out, that's precisely when euro bond spreads
>> began their upward march, culminating in the current crisis.
>>
>> By itself, that rate hike - although it was obviously, obviously
>> a big mistake - should not have mattered that much. But maybe
>> it acted as a signal of the ECB's bloody-mindedness, and
>> that's what set off the panic.
>>
>> If that's what happened, then the ECB's hard-money madness
>> may have destroyed the euro.
/jordan