When economic considerations alone were dominating the debate, austerity-obsessed northern Europe, oblivious to any Keynesian considerations, and struggling southern Europe, desperately in need of fiscal room to make demand-boosting, job-creating structural reforms politically feasible, were at loggerheads. The situation became so heated that some respected observers even proposed creating a “northern euro” for the region around Germany, and a “southern euro” in the Mediterranean (where France would fit was unclear).