Two cheers for Greece?

This might seem like an absurd idea in the current situation, but maybe the EU — or, to be more precise, the eurozone — should be grateful to Greece for the mess it has got itself into with its public finances.

A month ago, I criticized Greece for fiddling its figures and underestimating the size of its government deficit as a proportion of gross domestic product. I stand by that criticism but, as so often in life, the cloud has a silver lining.

In this case, the silver lining is the recent fall in the value of the euro from around $1.50 to $1.37. Eurozone exporters certainly won't be sorry about this fall, as it makes their goods more competitive abroad.

"But, but, but..." I hear you protesting. Surely this is not the right way for a depreciation of the euro to come about, as a result of the profligacy and book-cooking of one its smaller member states.

Well, maybe it's not ideal. But then beggars can't be choosers.

The standard wisdom on currency unions such as the euro is that individual countries can't devalue their currencies to improve their competitiveness, for example if inflation is too high.

Instead, the markets will punish such countries by pushing down their bond prices and making them pay more to borrow money. This is exactly what has happened to Greece. Its 10-year interest rates are now more than three percentage points higher that those in Germany.

But at the same time, the currency markets — including speculators — have massively sold off the common European currency. So Greece got its devaluation after all. It's just that all the other euro countries did, too. This doesn't help Greece with its intra-eurozone trade, but it does help the eurozone as a whole.

Of course, no public official in Europe would ever admit that the euro's fall has been a positive side effect of Greece's crisis. They would be too worried this would cause a dramatic run on the currency that would become unstoppable.

Maybe such a run will still happen as one or more of the other members of the charmingly named PIGS group (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) get into further trouble.

At the moment, however, it seems likely that the eurozone's support for Greece will prevent any further dramatic fall in the euro.

Greece will still have to impose austerity measures to get its economy and public finances into shape, but the eurozone as a whole will be quietly smiling to itself. After all, it never liked an exchange rate of $1.50.