The Greek events are proving curioser and curioser. Who is in the right? That is not just a tongue-in-cheek ideological observation of the forces aligned on the Right and Left but a puzzled view of what it means to be in a bear's embrace. Greece, apparently, finds itself in that predicament.
Consider these various articles: first, the latest by Paul Krugman who argues - quite convincingly in my opinion - that there can be no monetary union without political union. For those of us in Asia wishing for something like the EU project this could be a cautionary tale (perhaps the ASEAN has to be even more cautious since you have the big economies of Indonesia and Singapore at one end and the tiny ones of Laos and Cambodia at the other). Second, a previous article he cites by a couple of European economists who thumb their nose at American skepticism. Krugman's own assessment of the "Finnish disease" and finally, the Finnish finance minister's defense of his economy. Is the per capita GDP measure of a tiny country, that the finance minister uses as the thrust of his main argument, whose national income was high to start with and whose population is declining a supportable argument to compare with countries like Australia that has seen net increase in immigrant population?
What may be the case is that the EU had buy-in by different nation-state citizenry (especially the new members of the east and other smaller, poorer economies) because entry into the EU gave them access to the larger, higher income, western economy labor markets and the buy-in was mistakenly assumed by the Brussels bureaucrats as a consensus referendum on monetary union. Average citizens don't have a clue as to the ramifications and it appears the chickens have come home to roost.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/upshot/finland-shows-why-many-europeans-think-americans-are-wrong-about-the-euro.html?ref=international
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