Of all the things that were going on, why would you have a debate about that?

The German and the Dutch dairy industries wanted to ship their factory-farmed milk across Europe and sell it to Greek consumers. That would devastate the small Greek producers. Here was something that could only be seen as benefiting special interests in the eurozone and actually weakening the Greek economy.

You argue that some European leaders secretly welcomed mass unemployment as a means of adjusting to the crisis because this was the only way they could see to spur investment — lowering wages. The strictures of the euro took other options off the table: Crisis countries could not let their currency fall or lower interest rates or expand government spending. Was unemployment really embraced as a fix?

They wanted to break the back of workers. Their view was that workers needed to accept a wage cut and we are going to change the bargaining rules to make it more difficult for them to resist. And if we need to add on a little dose of unemployment, well, that’s unfortunate.

Doesn’t that goal predate the crisis?

It’s very clear that the euro was a neo-liberal project in its construction. Employers like low wages. They have broken the back of the unions in many of the countries of Europe. They would view that as a great achievement.

The whole point of the European project has been to get past the hostilities of World War II and build a sustainable community. Yet, in your telling, the euro and the policies delivered to preserve it left much of Europe nursing fresh grievances. How are these grievances coloring politics?

The most important divergence is between creditor, Germany, and debtor, the rest. The criticisms that you hear in Greece of the Germans, they are reliving the horrors of World War II; the criticism in Germany of the Greeks, saying that they are lazy even though the number of hours that they work per week is higher than the Germans’. The flinging of accusations, whether true or not, has been enormous and the divisiveness has been enormous.

We just saw Britain vote to exit the European Union — in part, a reaction to the sense that the European Union is a place of weak economic growth and poor leadership. In Italy, the so-called Five Star political movement is gaining support with calls to abandon the euro — in part, a backlash against German-led austerity. Is there any evidence that these sorts of events are leading to a re-examination of the economic philosophy guiding Europe?