(Newser)
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Is the euro the new League of Nations—a grand experiment that eventually gets abandoned and left to waste away? With bailouts in Greece and Ireland and threats to Portugal and Spain, the currency “can no longer take its survival for granted just because its collapse would be unthinkable,” writes Roger Cohen in the New York Times. German chancellor Angela Merkel is right that something’s got to give, and a "eurozone 2.0" may be needed. "But how shallow, paltry and mean-spirited has this German reaction to the euro crisis been!"
Merkel has been “morally bereft” on the bigger “idea of Europe"; instead, she sees Europe more as a burden than anything else, Cohen notes. But "the Faustian bargain Germany made for unification was giving up its beloved Deutsche mark for the euro. Now the euro is Berlin’s responsibility. Germany must consume more, carp less, and conceive bigger.” The League of Nations led to the UN; today’s euro could lead to something better.
