Debt doesn't mean that much in macro as long as the creditors are domestic. The Euro area as a whole still has an accumulated trade surplus from '99 till today.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/euro...lance-of-trade

Any look at Europe as if it's sick as a whole is laughable.There's no unusual problem on the whole.


Someday we will probably figure out how to tax correctly to finance the public services. To issue bonds instead of just grabbing the necessary revenue looks like a comfortable way for politicians, but it's clearly an inferior alternative.
The free capital flows to exotic countries and the international competition among labour has supposedly made it difficult to tax rigorously, but the more detailed you look at it, the more this assumption becomes implausible.