It is fitting that hysteria is a word with Greek roots. It reflects sentiment about the euro - excessive or uncontrollable emotion, often characterised by irrationality. Yet it is spreading across the world again. Yet another wail of despair is rising to a crescendo, as more and more people get drawn into another euro-induced mass panic attack.
It is all nonsense - or almost all of it.
If you read the English-language press or tune in to English-language news broadcasts these days, you could be forgiven for thinking that the euro is about to disintegrate. It seems as if the entire European economy is bouncing off the rocks, about to sink without a trace and liable to bring the rest of us down with it.
Read them carefully though, and most articles contain the scent of bias. They are usually written by leader writers and economists rooted in the US and Britain. Many are strongly influenced by the bankers they meet for lunch and by the hedge fund managers they quote - by those who have big bets that the euro will fall in value and much to gain from this narrative.
Many of the pot-stirrers are also noticeably anti-European Union and anti-euro - with many teetering on the edge of being anti- German too. They secretly hope that the euro will be the failure they always predicted, that they can laugh as the whole 'European project' crumbles. The Europeans don't get it, they say. Austerity will not work, they say. The euro is a fool's experiment, they snigger.
The trouble is, as well as being cheerleaders for a crisis, most of these writers don't understand what they are talking about. They don't understand Europe, or how it works.
If you live in Europe - and I do - and you read the German press - and I do - you will find a very different story. The Germans and the bureaucrats in Brussels are not the blind incompetents they are portrayed to be in the opinion pages of the Financial Times or the leaders of The Economist. They are not flapping around in a tizzy, without any plan. They understand the scale of the problem they face.