Germans Debate The Cost Of Keeping A Eurozone Within weeks,
Europe's spreading debt crisis will force Germany to decide on
one of the most critical questions in the continent's postwar
history: will currency union be strengthened or weakened?
Germany, with the biggest and healthiest economy, has to make
the call, and this has prompted a fierce national debate. The 17
European countries that use the euro as their common currency
have such widely varying debt burdens that they cannot survive
as a single "eurozone" unless the strongest rescue the weakest.
The cost of that intervention, however, could conceivably
approach a trillion euros ($1.45 trillion) and would necessarily
involve a major shift in governance authority from individual
states to the European power center in Brussels. Without
Germany's wealth and credit standing, nothing can happen. But
for Germany to give its blessing to a eurozone rescue mission,
German leaders would have to compromise on core principles of
thrift and sovereignty that until no