That's like €25 per person. It's basically meaningless.
Meanwhile, Germany's annual net contribution to the EU is €220 per person. I'm not pointing this out to complain–the EU is worth far more than that, and seeing the giant improvements these transfers have supported in Eastern Europe, or Ireland, or Portugal makes their usefulness obvious.
But suggesting that Germany (and the other countries involved) took on billions and billions in risk hoping to earn what are obviously below-market returns is laughable. Not everything is motivated by money.
You are forgetting that at the start of the Greek crisis, the debt was owned by private banks (mostly German and French), now it's owned by the Europeans.
So, basically we saved those banks, make the life of the Greeks worse in the process, and now they owe even more money than before.
It's actually €34 per German and €237 per Greek. Different countries, different people.
The German contribiution to the EU is not guaranteed to make it's way back into the Greek economy. And Germans could perhaps use an unpaved country road to travel and move goods to and from Greece instead of a highway that passes through 5 different states, of which two are not even in the EU but have received money from the EU exactly for this kind of infrastructure.
They'll make even more in Frankfurt when holding defaulted PIIGS sovereign debt when the ECB exhausts its capability to be largest marginal counterparty bidder while also trying to target asset price stability…
