Investors looking for a profitable angle to the Greek deficit tragedy should look north and west to Germany but also have a quick way out.

Germany, the strongest economy in the 16-member euro zone, has seen its fortunes rise, as Greece, the weakest, struggles to extricate itself from a $400 billion deficit that the country masked to gain entrance into the unified currency. However, the stability of those gains remains in question.

A $1.2 billion auction of Greek treasury bonds on Tuesday was oversubscribed and may have left investors feeling more comfortable with European assets than some market watchers say they should. Although the auction was hailed as a sign that debt markets have enough confidence in the country s future to refrain from invoking the euro zone s $40.8 billion rescue plan, some say that confidence remains fragile.

[The auction] went fine today, says Robert Brusca, the chief economist for Fact and Opinion Economics, but what about tomorrow?" A bond selloff could easily push up yields to unsustainable levels, he says. Case in point: Greek bonds hit an interest rate of 7.5% on April 9, driving up the cost of insuring against default to record levels, as well.

Another warning sign came Thursday, when The Wall Street Journal reported Greek officials said they were scaling back their expectations for a global dollar bond issue planned for the end of April and raised the possibility of cancelling the issuance on weak demand.

"It's a never-ending saga," says Boris Schlossberg, director of currency research at GFT Forex. Now that the economic woes of Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal weigh on the broader continent's economy, its currency has plunged and remains weak, Schlossberg says. In the last three months, the euro has dropped from $1.45 to just below $1.36. On April 9 it hit a low of $1.33. And it may have further to fall.

"While the whole notion of the euro crumbling is a very remote possibility, there are people who are predicting it could go to $1.25, or into the $1.20s," Schlossberg says.

The main short-term beneficiary is Germany. The world's second-largest exporter behind China should see a near-term boost because its merchandise is now a relative bargain. "Any time you can lower the euro it's got a very stimulative effect on the German economy," Schlossberg says. "They want to keep it low and string this out, to some degree."

The German market is already benefitting. In the last month, the iShares MSCI Germany Index fund has climbed 4.8%, well ahead of the 3.6% rise in the iShares MSCI EMU Index fund, which tracks stocks throughout the euro zone.

But the currency disparity can't make up for the fact that the regional economy has serious problems, which could soon flatten Germany's spike.

Even if the deficit crisis in other weak euro-zone economies is corralled, the unstable currency could leave an overhang on European stocks. Greek aftershocks are still creating problems throughout Europe, says Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a former economic counselor and director of the research department at the International Monetary Fund.

The jump in Greek yields last week caused by investors selling off the last of three sovereign bond issues scared major European banks. It also raised the possibility of "a real run on Greek banks," Johnson says in a recent commentary. He held out little possibility of a definitive solution to Greek's troubles.

Without that containment, the entire region's weaknesses could be exposed, Brusca says. "It's nice if you're making travel plans, but to me, one of things this points out is that Europe is still broken and needs to be fixed," he says.

Germany s role in bailing out a weak eruo partner triggered considerable domestic anger, but Schlossberg says the alternative would be far worse.

Germany has to step up as the driving force and funding source of the rescue plan, Schlossberg says, adding that the plan is nearly certain to be used at some point. What Germans don't really appreciate is that if the euro zone crumbles, Germany would lose more than it would gain. They are the biggest beneficiary of a unified euro-zone environment.