Did anyone say lazy? I think the attitude was more like "irresponsible": Taking on debt with no hope of paying it off.

>The ECB could have brought government bond yields down from the beginning and most of the problems could have been avoided.

Is that sustainable? Argentina's predicament is basically caused by a variant of this. The Peronists gave handouts to buy votes, funded by money printing (ie. "The ECB could have brought government bond yields down"), but that has consequences and turned Argentina into an economic basket case. Of course, you might argue the EU doesn't have this problem because it's stronger economically and other states can prop them up, but that begs the question, why should member countries like Germany fund Southern Europeans's fiscal profligacy?

That populist narrative was popular on social media, but the truth is the exact opposite.

Germany had relatively reasonable debt and government spending relative to taxes.

Italy had entirely dysfunctional spending and Greece was essentially a house of cards built on fraud. Without the Eurozone, Greece would have faced bankruptcy and/or hyperinflation, but instead they got bailed out by the rest of the EU.

Check out Michael Lewis's book Boomerang that covers the distinct problems Iceland, Ireland and Greece faced. The TL;DR on Greece is a country with massive social spending and tiny tax receipts, that took out massive and entirely unsustainable debt thanks to the other Euro countries and then inevitably was unable to pay it back.

Germany was the hero who saved the EU from complete implosion, but instead of being thanked they get misplaced anger for being the only responsible ones in the room.

surely buying bonds will save you when you are running 8% yearly deficits to buy votes with welfare payments