欧元区的死穴不是债务

    因此，西班牙生产的这种小装置在国际市场上将毫无竞争力，除非西班牙货币对德国货币的汇率能降至西班牙单位劳动力成本低于德国的水平。欧元诞生前，这样的货币贬值过程经常会出现。但现在已经不可能。

    为了搞清危机怎么会突然爆发，不妨先简单回顾一下欧元从救世主变为破坏者的历程。正是欧元的影响，致使欧元区强国和弱国之间的单位劳动力成本差距较欧元诞生前进一步扩大，而意大利、希腊则丧失了之前藉以维持经济增长的重要缓冲机制。

弱国更弱

    为了简单一点，我们把欧元区分为两部分，一部分是“核心”强国，主要是德国、荷兰和奥地利，另一部分则是“南部”地区，包括意大利、西班牙、希腊和葡萄牙，以及地理上不属于该区域但同样深陷困境的爱尔兰。即使是在1999年1月1日欧元诞生前，南部国家的利率正处于大幅下降通道。到2005年左右，消费者和政府的借款利率不到5%，低于十年前的12%。信贷猛增，宽松的货币主要流向了那些无外国竞争的产业，即经济学家所谓的“非外贸产业”，包括从房地产、保险、景观设计到美发护发等众多行业。

    因此，这些严格内需型产业的薪资和价格飙升。从90年代末到00年代末，欧洲南部国家的价格增幅平均高出德国和其他核心国家1.5%。

    卡内基基金会（Carnegie Endowment）驻华盛顿的经济学家乌里•达迪什称：“偶们的单一货币政策对弱国而言太为宽松，而对德国和北部国家而言又过紧。”宽松的货币政策使得欧洲南部国家的消费者和政府的借款利率远低于国内通胀率，鼓励他们背负高额债务，其中主要来自国外借债。

    薪资上涨是另一个棘手的问题。非外贸产业的繁荣发展导致劳动力市场供不应求，出口行业的薪资也水涨船高，因为他们只能与建筑行业争夺人手。除了爱尔兰，欧元区弱国大多并没有采取什么措施来改善刚性的劳动力市场。而且，事实上这些国家的法律更多地服务于确保薪资的增速高于生产率的增速。严格的劳动法规和本国劳动力市场需求的猛增两相结合，导致截至2007年的十年间，欧洲南部国家的薪资每年增幅高达5.9%，比欧元区核心国家高出了2.7个百分点。

    但欧洲南部国家的薪资高增长难以持续。单一货币政策对德国的影响正相反：在德国，利率太高，抑制了经济增长。德国的薪资增幅显著低于希腊和西班牙。这又回到了单位劳动力成本。从2000年到2010年，希腊薪资增长了36%，意大利和西班牙增长了31%，爱尔兰增长了29%。而德国的增幅只有4%。因此，德国和其他核心国家获得了巨大的竞争优势，而南欧国家则沦落到靠借贷度日。美国和中国（也与德国）一样，两者同样也受益于美元和人民币兑欧元汇率的下跌。

    Spain can still sell its widgets abroad, but only if its currency declines versus the German money to the point where its wages are lower than German wages. That adjustment process was constantly happening in the pre-euro days. Now, it can't happen.

    To understand how the crisis struck so unexpectedly, let's briefly examine the euro's savior-to-spoiler history. It was the euro's influence that caused unit labor costs in the strong vs weak economies to diverge far faster than they did in the pre-euro days, and that simultaneously eliminated the crucial shock absorber that allowed an Italy or Greece to keep growing in the past.

The weak get weaker

    To simplify, we'll divide the eurozone into the two parts, the "core" stronger economies, chiefly Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, and the "southern" zone of Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, and one ailing nation that doesn't belong geographically, Ireland. Even before the euro was introduced on January 1, 1999, interest rates were falling sharply in for the southern countries. By the mid-2000s, consumers and governments were borrowing at less than 5%, compared to 12% a decade earlier. Credit exploded, and the easy money flowed mainly into industries that don't face foreign competition, what economists call the "non-traded sector," encompassing everything from real estate to insurance to landscaping and hair care.

    As a result, wages and prices in those strictly domestic industries soared. From the late 1990s to the late 2000s, prices rose an average of 1.5% faster in the southern countries than in the Germany and rest of the core.

    "The single monetary policy was too loose for the weaker countries, and too tight for Germany and the northern nations," says Uri Dadush, an economist at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, DC. The easy money allowed both consumers and governments in the southern nations to borrow at rates far lower than the pace of inflation inside their borders, encouraging both to pile on huge debt, chiefly from abroad.

    The march of wages was another daunting problem. The boom in the non-traded sector caused a tight labor market, and drove up pay for exporters who had to compete with the construction industry for workers. It didn't help that, with the exception of Ireland, the weaker countries did nothing to tame their extremely inflexible labor markets. The laws in those countries are virtually designed to raise wages faster than productivity growth. The combination of rigid labor laws and the explosion in domestic demand caused wages in the southern zone to jump 5.9% a year for the decade ending in 2007, 2.7 points faster than in core Europe.

    The southern zone's growth spurt was ephemeral. The blanket monetary policy had precisely the reverse effect on redoubtable Germany, where rates were too high, restraining growth. German wages didn't see nearly the increases that Greece or Spain experienced. That brings us back to unit labor costs. From 2000 to 2010, they rose 36% in Greece, 31% in Italy and Spain, and 29% in Ireland. For Germany, the figure was 4%. So Germany and the other core countries gained an enormous competitive edge while the south lived on borrowing, as did the U.S. and China, which also benefited from a fall in the dollar and yuan versus the euro.