You have the causality reversed. All of the things you enumerated are caused by the relative economic strengths of those economies. Those relative economic strengths are themselves caused by (in large part) by their regulatory regimes, particularly with respect to things like hiring and firing.
I’m not saying that regulatory environment doesn’t contribute, but the monetary aspect has an amplifying effect.
Germany’s trade surplus wouldn’t be able to be anywhere near as large without the rest of Western Europe pulling down the Euro exchange rate, and unemployment in the trade deficit countries likely wouldn’t be anywhere near as high without (from their perspective) Germany pulling the exchange rate high.
Ah, ya then I agree. The euro is a terrible mistake. You can't have a universal currency without a universal regulatory scheme, as Europe is discovering, and countries like Britain are resisting.
