I have been watching the Euro crisis unfold, so let's go through some history. When the Eurozone was formed, Germany took advantage of economies of scale and ended up dominating the trade (in fact I think Germany is only second to China as an exporter) exporting goods to Portugal/Spain/Greece etc. Since those countries were also on the Euro they couldn't devalue their currency in order to make German goods more expensive. The Germans ended up with a huge advantage and of course ended up with ...