> If you're going to say it's not a coincidence, you should have evidence.
The EURO is a common currency. If one country has better infrastructures, geographical position to begin with, etc. It's impossible for countries lagging behind to compete. The 'developed' country will always produce XYZ products at a lower price because it has better technology. So the weaker country will accumulate an export deficit while the stronger country will accumulate a surplus. Now, the 'strong country' will start employing more and more man-power, driving down unemployment because it becomes more and more competitive at product/service 1, product/service 2 and so on and so forth.
At the same time in the weak country will be harder and harder to produce (primary sector or secondary sector) and sell because products flowing in from 'strong country' are in the same currency and being at the same union, there's no import tax.
Now a 2nd year economics student, who has studied macro-economics, would tell you that at this point, the surplus sitting in 'strong country' should become investment in various forms in 'weak country' in order to allow 'weak country' to somehow cope with the difference. Indirectly 'strong country' injects money in it's primary market which is (if we're talking mainly about an exporting economy) the 'weak country' in form of direct or indirect investment.
What Germany does is accumulate money. Greece is the weakest link, but if Greece goes out of the picture, you'll see how Italy, Spain, Portugal and ultimately even France will look a lot like Greece in the long run because they can't compete with the Germans having the same currency.
The above scheme underlies the biggest EUR caveat: You can't have a common currency without having political integration. It's simply impossible because in the long you will always have situations like this. While Greece is a small country so no one cares, when Italy's of France's turn comes, the repercussions and turmoil will be far greater and no matter what the media outlets say, the general feeling I'm getting from all over Europe is that the EUR didn't integrate sh*t. The common currency achieved the exact opposite: It highlighted the worst part of every nation.
I urge you to read Bernanke's article: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben-bernanke/posts/2015/04/03...
Also: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/24/germany-surp...
There are numerous other articles mainly by academics and of course Varoufakis from 2013: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/11/01/the-us-treasury-is-righ...