How did we get into this mess?

The fundamental cause is debt. Individual households, businesses and in particular governments have borrowed far too much. Now the bill is being presented for a half-century of profligacy.

Total debt in the mature economies has grown to more than three times their annual output. It has doubled since 1980. This does NOT include future liabilities such as pensions that will have to be paid.

Governments are largely to blame. Example: in the US corporate debt is equivalent to 75 per cent of one year's economic output, and consumer debt is 95 per cent -- but government debt, including the cost of promises such as pensions to be paid in future, reached 541 per cent at the end of last year and is still climbing fast.

How did the mountain of debt come about?

Countries have introduced lavish welfare - social and medical services, cash benefits, early retirement pensions -- without providing for ways to pay for it all. Costs are spiralling for current benefits and particularly, with ageing populations, the forecast future costs of pensions and medical services.

Governments have hugely expanded work forces in the public sector, ruling parties often using their powers of patronage to create jobs for their core supporters such as labour union members, and usually on pay and benefits higher than in the private sector. Nearly one million such jobs in Britain alone, under the last Labour government. Many of such jobs give little value to the national economy, but all add to the burden of state spending… and borrowing.

People have been encouraged by governments via low interest rates and tax advantages to borrow more, often more than they can afford. In some countries such as the US, Spain and the UK, this produced a bubble in real estate whose collapse has left families heavily burdened with personal debt.

The "great recession" triggered by the financial crisis that began in 2007 has curbed economic growth - tax revenues have fallen, state benefits such as unemployment pay have soared, and huge amounts have been poured into zombie banks and politically powerful interests such as General Motors; the extra money has been borrowed.

The logic for promoting debt is that it spurs economic growth. But the more debt there is, the less effective it is. In the US one dollar of credit used to create as much as five dollars worth of economic growth. Now it creates only half a dollar. Creating more debt depresses growth.

Debt can go on accumulating for a long time without causing a crisis. Then one happens, suddenly.

David Fuller's view I think this is an excellent summary by Martin Spring and it applies not just to Euroland's problems but to most heavily indebted countries throughout history, although some of them became indebted through wars rather than aggrandisement, corruption or entitlements. Arguably, only wars and plagues have caused more human misery than debt.

I agree that governments are largely to blame although there is a collective responsibility in democracies because we get the government that the majority elects and therefore deserves.

Europe has been strong on entitlements - to a fault. A succession of weak, mainly coalition governments have also abdicated their fiscal responsibility in the face of pressure from unions. Debt problems were cynically rolled forward so that they would land on someone else's watch.

When have debt problems not been an accident waiting to happen? For governments, all it takes is an economic downturn.

How many politicians have advocated a meritocracy rather than 'fairness', with the latter usually being a euphemism for entitlements and redistribution of wealth?

Europe, at the eleventh hour, is finding the political will and discipline to keep the euro viable for at least the next few years. The bigger challenge, which would provide lasting rewards for its citizens, is to encourage the dynamic capitalism capable of providing long-term GDP growth throughout the region.