MOST of Germany's political leadership continues to state unwavering support for euro zone. And perhaps if push came to shove and an economy truly were on the brink of exit, the German government would accept quite significant sacrifices to forestall that possibility. One wonders, though. For now, many prominent Germans seem to believe that discomfort should be shunted onto the periphery to the greatest extent possible. Today Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's finance minister, had this to say:

"There is much money in the market, in my view too much money," Schaeuble said in an interview for the German economic weekly Wirtschaftswoche released on Friday. "If the ECB tries to use what leeway it has to reduce this great liquidity a little I would welcome that," he said, adding that the ECB had done well to bring inflation below 2 percent.

In an interview this week German economist Hans Werner Sinn at least acknowledged that if internal devaluation were to take place mostly through price and wage declines in the periphery, that would squeeze economies there toward "civil war". But as improved competitiveness through price increases in the core would mean inflation at about 5.5% for a decade (his figures) he reckoned it would be best for some peripheral economies to consider leaving. Obviously that sort of inflation (a touch worse than what America experienced in the 1980s) would be intolerable for the Germans. Better this:

And this:

The Greek economy is in free fall, having shrunk by 20 percent in the past five years. The unemployment rate is more than 27 percent, the highest in Europe, and 6 of 10 job seekers say they have not worked in more than a year. Those dry statistics are reshaping the lives of Greek families with children, more of whom are arriving at schools hungry or underfed, even malnourished, according to private groups and the government itself.

It is no use trying to figure out what "fair" is. It is hard to blame Germans who have saved prudently and minded their own business for not wanting the value of those savings eroded by inflation, even moderately. But at some point there needs to be a bit of perspective about the relative costs and benefits of different crisis approaches.