Chapter 1 explains why the single currency fuelled economic asymmetries within the Eurozone throughout its first decade and how these asymmetries translated into country specific shocks in the reaction to the global financial crisis. I discuss the economic and political assumptions underpinning the constitutional setup of the Economic and Monetary Union, sketching them against a broader context of economic beliefs prevailing when the Eurozone was being set up and drawing attention to the arguments both for and against them raised in this period. Next, the chapter explains why, contrary to the prevailing optimistic beliefs, the single currency fuelled economic asymmetries within the Eurozone throughout its first decade and how these asymmetries translated into country specific shocks in the reaction to the global financial crisis. In 2010 these shocks paved the way for the trifurcated balance of payments crisis, the banking crisis and the sovereign debt crisis.