@Landslide Lyndon
I don't mind to be corrected, if i'm wrong. But I fear, that your facts need some straightening. I never talked of policies among the mediteranian countries. I meant the individual policies of france, italy, spain, etc. they all spent (and spend) too much. This is perverting John Maynard Keynes.
As I see your avatar, my wife has greek parents. So i know a little something about the state of things in Greece. I admire what has been achieved in Greece, but France and Italy will have to go the same way.
And you still don't know what you're talking about. Spain was running surpluses before the 2008 financial crisis. Italy had very small deficits even after that. There was no profligate spending as you say. That's a lie conservatives continue to repeat even though it's been repeatedly discredited.
As for capital flow, nobody talked about handouts. What everyone (even Draghi) asks from Germany and the other northern European countries is to ease monetary policy and let their inflation rise a little because southern Europe is in imminent danger of entering a deflationary vortex.
The issue is not so much about the deficits of those countries (well, it is partly, but I digress), but the unsustainable levels of debt that the PIG countries (I'll exclude Spain and Ireland since they were less profligate) ran up prior to the financial crisis, after which they piled a further amount when the financial crisis hit. Now, the latter is forgiveable, since you can't simply let banks go bust by the dozen. However, the slapdash management of the public finances prior to the crash by the governments of countries such as Greece and Portugal can't be ignored. That is not a 'conservative lie'; it is a fact. Although, to be fair, Grece and Portugal should never have been allowed to join the Euro in the first place (in fact, the Euroe was always a bad idea generally, but again, I digress).
