You think it is something other than supply and demand? The Fed and BoE can print; The ECB cannot. The result (which is related to printing) you failed to quote: Greek deflation.
It's not complicated.
Individual (small) countries may fail, the system will be fine, and misinformed doomsayers will - as always - end up making fools of themselves.
The euro is up 16% because there are more dollars in circulation chasing the same number of euros. Same for the pound.
A deflationary environment in Europe (what are prices doing in Greece? What is the Spanish unemployment rate?) is exactly what you would expect, and the Euro up 16% against the USD and 23.3% against the UK pound is evidence of that.
Or to put it another way: You quote evidence that supports the point you are trying to refute.
(Perhaps you are being confused by the term "up" in currency exchanges? It makes exports more expensive, which makes the deflation worse since fewer employees will be needed.)
All I wanted to say is that in the long run, foreign exchange rates express some form of judgment about the soundness of a currency. The markets still consider the Euro a very sound and safe currency - at least more so than the USD and the UK pound. A weaker exchange rate might be preferable, but that is not a way Europe wants to go. Instead of printing money, the idea is to restructure the economy. In the short run this will of course be super painful and allow commentators to shout "Look, austerity has failed". Let's talk again in 2025, bond yields for Greece,Italy,Spain are already down...
No, you didn't. You compared two isolated data points.
If you look at the actual graph of the last ten years, the Euro has been both considerably higher and considerably lower against the dollar over that period.
Draghi said last year that the ECB is prepared to purchase "unlimited amounts", so if there is a bank run, the central bank will fill up the banks' balance sheets as necessary (in theory).
No. This is exactly the problem: The echoes of the German hyperinflation of the 1930s are still being heard, so Merkel and crowd have repeatedly stood against printing.
As for the ECB purchases, those were "sterilized" as opposed to "quantitative easing", which is what the Fed does. http://blogs.wsj.com/eurocrisis/2012/09/06/the-ecb-steriliza...
It does end up on the central bank's balance sheet, but there's no event that would force the bank to ever write it down. Those hundreds of billions in loans can stay unpaid for hundreds of years if necessary.