Germany is under fire from the rating agencies. I had outlined this in a previous post, the dangers of the German sovereign debt and how it isn’t a safe haven anymore. Europe is going for self destruction, and it does not seem to acknowledge that fact.
It is sad to see the EU authorities not taking the right decisions. In 2010 they should have saved Greece with total effort in order to avoid other pseudo bail-outs, it would have been cheaper than have to save Spain and Italy. If they had shown full force since the beginning, the spread of the disease would have been contained, but they wanted to teach us all a lesson. Unfortunately for Germany they will also learn a lesson: their major commercial partner is the EU, if the EU countries are broken, Germany won’t be able to sustain the current industrial output, therefore the unemployment will grow, the budget deficit will grow, and their debt will not be AAA anymore. It is ironic that to maintain its triple A rating Germany should have helped the Greeks.
I still believe that there will be an EU after this nonsense, but I am starting to think that the cost for many countries is growing at a rapid pace. Spain is falling from a cliff at one region per day. If the Chinese economy ends up with a hard landing, that would be too much for the world economy. I starting to think that we might be heading for a Long depression (1873 – 1896).
Investment Gems 
There are just 2 problems right now in this disfunctional EU: wide range of different cultures and nobody wants to give up their sovereinty. How can we form a fiscal union with so many differente cultures and with no one wanting to cede their sovereinty? People tend to compare USA to USE (United states of Europe). The big difference is that USA were created from the begining as a fiscal union with all the states being fully integrated and Europe, which has more than 500 years of history, with many conflicts between countries, and with so many different cultures, is now trying to do the same.
Day by day I belive less on the so called project Europe. I have to agree with the german people: Why should we pay for years and years of consuming, spending, leverage, no production and no value creation of southern countries?
I agree with you in most of your points. But let’s not forget that Germany was the most benefited member of the Euro, which eliminated the strong deutsche mark, and allowed them to increase its exports for the EU countries. In my opinion that is the biggest argument in favor of the Southern countries.
Now obviously many countries have a huge pile of debt and should pay it, but if to do so they end up killing their economy then they won’t be able to pay their debts at all. Which leads to the argument that Germany should be more worried about giving conditions to the troubled countries pay their debts, than trying to infinitely punish their mistakes and get caught by a downgrade in the process.
To sum up I guess that everyone is guilty of all this mess. Starting in the messed up US housing market, the ECB collateral policy that allowed banks to lend to governments and then get that money back trough loans from the ECB, the governments that allowed themselves to run a country based on increasing debt, the Southern countries that enjoyed the good life without asking why was it so easy, and Germany for letting the groceries bill account to pile up without asking: “can you pay this thing?”