Respectfully disagree: An important reason why they lost competitiveness is that they shared a currency with Germany, which worked well for Germany in terms of

Respectfully disagree: An important reason why they lost competitiveness is that they shared a currency with Germany, which worked well for Germany in terms of trade. You can make the moral arguments like "they shouldn't have.." but the truth is they are an institution not an individual. They should suffer for taking loans, but so should the institutions that offered them that new better.