Germans often respond by invoking worries about “moral hazard”: the fear that, if they were to relax their fiscal stance, countries like France and Italy would fail to push through much-needed but politically challenging structural reforms. Yet those reforms are much harder to make in the absence of growth. In any case Germany itself is now on the edge of recession. If growth in the euro zone does not revive soon, and even worse if deflation were to set in, the single currency would be in peril. Were it to fail, Germany would suffer grievously.