LIKE a marriage in its last throes, the euro appears to be falling apart before our eyes. But does it really have to happen? It’s worth remembering that the eurozone as a whole is in trade balance — it’s comfortably solvent, so that settling of accounts could resolve the problem without any financing from the IMF or China. But any solution to the crisis will need to involve rejecting narratives of resentment and betrayal.

At the moment, the architects of the euro project still find it hard to forgive being hostage to Greece, whose economy is no larger than the state of Hesse. But the damage of a Greek exit will be out of all proportion to its size, as other dominoes totter, damaging confidence and trade even if they don’t fall. It’s the mark of a truly dysfunctional relationship when resentment at being threatened with break-up is the main reason no one will compromise to stop it happening.

Any therapist knows that saving a marriage has to start with abandoning stories of one-sided blame. In an economic union, nowhere is this more important than when creditors and debtors blame each other. Yes, the Greek government has been spectacularly spendthrift. From when it joined the euro at the beginning of 2001 until reality began to sink in at the end of 2009, Greece was the world’s fourth largest arms importer.

But assigning blame becomes harder when you look at who sold Greece the arms. The US was the largest supplier, but France and Germany together delivered over a third of the total — with eager financing from French and German banks. Greek debt received a ratings downgrade as early as 2004 — can anyone remember a French or German politician urging arms suppliers to be more cautious about selling on credit?

Nor will it do to blame the public sector, as if the euro crisis were due to a secret conspiracy of the political classes against the rest of us. Spain had healthier public finances than Germany till 2007. The Spanish debt buildup was a private-sector drama, with French and German banks lending money to Spanish real-estate speculators. There’s nothing wrong with lending money, provided it’s used to enhance the borrower’s ability to repay.

Yet remarkably, at a time when higher education has been expanding in many countries, Spain had more than 20 per cent fewer students entering higher education in 2008 than it had 10 years previously — presumably the lure of easy money in real estate was too hard to resist.

Instead of asking why ‘they’ let it happen, maybe we should ask why we let it happen. Greece’s arms binge was no secret; the data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is on the Internet. Spain’s higher education decline can be tracked on the OECD website.

The official response to the crisis has been to turn it into a morality play, pitting southern profligacy against northern rectitude. This sends the dangerous message that the citizens of the debtor countries need to suffer badly to signal their contrition. — The Guardian, London