If you read Mark Steyn's America Alone, you would have seen this coming in 2006 (see page 44). He cited an NIC report that predicted an EU collapse by 2020. He felt that their report was 'conservative.'
Augean Socialism
Socialism: If you don't think heavy regulation, elephantine bureaucracies, union rule and runaway spending amount to poison for an economy, take a gander at what decades of such socialist policies have done to Greece.
Last week, the tiny Balkan state seemed like a blazing house threatening to set the rest of its European Union neighborhood on fire.
It started when Greece earned the first of two sovereign downgrades from ratings agency Fitch over its $436 billion budget deficit. Then Standard & Poor's cut Greece to BBB+ from A- and sternly warned that if the government didn't get serious about controlling its spending, the downgrade wouldn't be its last.
Through the week, investors dumped Greek bonds, and word rose that Greece would need a bailout from the European Union.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=515788