“Ground zero of Europe’s debt-currency-banking crisis isn’t in Greece, or Portugal, or Ireland or even Spain. It’s in Germany.”
“At one end is a powerful and highly efficient industrial export engine that generates a large trade surplus with the rest of the world, including most other countries in the eurozone. Instead of spending this new export wealth on a higher standard of living, however, parsimonious Germans prefer to save it, handing it over to thinly capitalized German banks that have proved equally efficient in destroying said wealth by investing it in risky securities issued, not coincidentally, by trading partners that need the capital to finance their trade deficits with Germany.”
“What Germans won’t accept is that they wouldn’t have been able to sell all those beautifully designed cars and well-engineered machine tools if Greeks and Spaniards and Americans hadn’t been willing to buy those goods and German banks hadn’t been so willing to lend them the money to do so. “
Observing Hermann 
The Euro has definitely been good for Germany in this aspect; previously, southern European countries would devalue their currencies as a way to boost imports, which obviously had a negative impact on German exports. The Euro ended this currency fluctuation in the Eurozone, providing Germany with a stable market to push its export centred economic model. Unfortunately for the southern European countries, Germans just didn’t want to consume any of their products as a way to address the trade imbalance. Germans just didn’t consume full stop, meaning Germany’s reliance on heavy industry production requires it to find foreign markets for its goods. For the Eurozone to work, these southern countries must become more competitive, but Germans need to start consuming. I wouldn’t hold my breath.