There is just one problem with this diagnosis: it is wrong. The ongoing Eurozone crisis really has very little to do with the fiscal profligacy of periphery sovereigns, only one of which, as noted, was meaningfully profligate. There is a crisis in European sovereign debt markets; of that there is no doubt. But treating it as a crisis brought about by debt-fueled consumption and profligate state spending is to confuse correlation (they happened at the same time) with causation (out-of-control spending caused the crisis).

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 152