2) Sweden and Switzerland both have strong currencies and are doing fine. Greece's problems have very little to do with the Euro: Look at rankings like the Doing Business Report, Transparency International's Corruption index, rankings of economic competitiveness - in all these rankings Greece is doing horribly! Look at the ARWU rankings of top 500 Universities worldwide (http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html): Greece has 2 Universities in the top 500, Sweden has 11 and Switzerland has 7 (highly ranked) Universities. Look at patent filings, for example the US Patent office (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm): Sweden had 2413 patents filed in 2013, Switzerland had 2466 and Greece had 70 (!!!). Considering the countries comparable population size (Greece is biggest), this is a HUGE disparity!