’Yanis Varoufakis says that if Greece means to exit the euro, it should default on its euro bonds and then introduce the drachma’
Really? It’s that easy to launch a currency? Usually you need a big fund to back it. They used Marshall Aid to back the new Deutsch mark in 1947? And to launch the Euro took the consolidated funds of the European System of Central Banks. Lee Kuan Yew used Singapore’s accumulated Foreign Exchange – but it was an entrepot for goods exchanged between Malaysia, Indonesia, Europe, America and China, so had a lot of reserves. This is the very worst time for Greece to re-invent the Drachma, since it has nothing to back it, it would be a currency without legitimacy, either on the world or the domestic market. I don’t mean to be quietistic about Greece’s position, but I suspect that to really challenge the austerity package, Greek people would have to change a lot more than the currency. Greece is a sovereign country in name, but in practice its policies are drafted in Brussels. To recover its sovereignty would need some spectacular struggle.
As to what Germany wants, there is no great indication that they want to see the Eurozone slimmed down (admittedly there were noises, but I read this as rhetorical, rather than real). German industry relies on the European hinterland as a preferential trading bloc for its goods, and has, until the wheels came off, been willing to see easy credit in the Eurozone extended to promote that buying up of her surplus goods. Still, their aim seems to be reform (read subversion) of European governments, not break up of the Euro.