Whenever someone complains about German unwillingness to bail out the rest of Europe, and thus risk total disaster, someone invariably responds: But why should hardworking Germans bail out countries that borrowed too much and don't work as much? On the surface, it does seem kind of immoral to burden German taxpayers in this way, but actually there's a perfectly good answer. Since its inception, the Eurozone has been a gigantic German subsidy machine. This chart from the NYT shows it quite nicely: Since the common currency was formed, the German trade surplus surged. The trade deficit of everyone else widened Read ... (full story)