Steven Beard apparently does not have access to data on budget deficits. He wrongly told Market Place listeners that the euro zone crisis is due to the fact that euro zone countries spent more money than they took in. This is wrong, wrong, and wrong!

The euro zone crisis is due to the fact the European Central Bank was managed by incompetent people who either did not see the housing bubbles across the continent and the world or did not understand their implications for the euro zone economies. It was the collapse of these bubbles that threw the euro zone countries into a severe downturn.

With the exception of Greece, it is this downturn that is the origin of chronic deficit problems. The other heavily indebted countries had sustainable deficits or even surpluses prior to the collapse.