What made this spending possible was that having adopted the euro, Greece and the other European periphery states (Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Ireland) were effectively endowed with Germany’s credit rating on the assumption that the ECB would back all outstanding debt issued by member states since it was all in the “same” new euro currency. As such, the historically high borrowing costs of these countries fell. Greece’s borrowing costs, for example, fell from 20 percent on a ten-year bond before the introduction of the euro to around 4 percent in 2005, and in the case of Greece in particular, more borrowing was the result. Since Greece was able to borrow more easily, money became more plentiful locally, financing both consumption and investment. However, this also raised Greece’s labor costs relative to its Euro Area neighbors; its competitiveness fell, widening its current account deficit—Greece was importing more than it was exporting with the extra cash.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 177