Merkel finally lost her patience with the Greeks today. She issued an ultimatum. She said either they shape up or ship out. She thinks that last weeks summit on Greece was something to be thankful for. She expended a lot of political capital to get fellow Germans to agree to even that much, meaning the 50% haircut for the Greeks and promises of more aid. She doesn’t think they are taking their membership in the EU currency union very seriously.
This underlies a feeling of many Germans that the euro should be abandoned for the mark. Either that or they should have a currency union only with other like-minded countries such as the Netherlands, Austria, and Finland with perhaps the Czech Republic and Slovakia thrown in. But what’s interesting is that sounds like the old German Reich.