What if the worst-happened? Allianz, the German insurer, reckons a break-up of the eurozone would cost Germany three percent of its gross domestic product and a million jobs. Its calculations, in a report released on Wednesday, assume a number of highly-indebted eurozone countries exit the monetary union, leaving a “core” union centred on Germany and a few other countries such as France, the Benelux states and Austria.

In such an event, Germany would be hit by a large, Lehman Brothers-style confidence shock, a decline in global trade and a “massive appreciation” of the “core euro” against most other currencies, Allianz says. Read more