Because that's the point of floating the currency: To make sure that the external account takes care of itself.

With the external account in balance (as it must be unless you want to argue that the ECBuBa is going to start printing Euro in bulk to buy dollars and Yuan?), and Germany attempting to run a surplus, there must be a deficit somewhere else in the Eurozone.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

It's like the Archimedes principle for fluids. Size doesn't matter - the floating exchange rate will do the trick. It then becomes a question of intra-EU competition, and I don't know about you but I'd like the EU to be an area of cooperation, not of cutthroat races to the bottom (we've seen how well that has worked over the past 15 years).

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker