Eurozone leaders bring monetary union to the brink

From the UK Telegraph:

By Ed Conway

There’s a thin line between tragedy and comedy, and this weekend the finance ministers of the euro area blundered over it. They gathered in Washington in the shadow of the darkest economic clouds since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, with the world’s eyes upon them.

Even as they met, stock markets around the world suffered their worst day since those dark months of recession. The MSCI World stock market index dropped into technical bear market territory. European sovereign debt teetered on the brink of insolvency and its banking system threatened to topple.

G20 sources finally conceded that it is now a question of when, not if, Greece will default. And in the face of this hideous storm what did they come up with? A deadline. In fact, that’s not quite it: they set themselves a deadline to come up with a timetable. You couldn’t make it up. Euro leaders have been given six weeks to devise a legal framework to implement measures which, if they are lucky, may have a fighting chance of saving the euro.

Of course, if ever there were a bunch of people you could count on to miss a deadline like this, it is the eurozone’s ministers. It is their prevarication throughout the recent crisis – whether over addressing their public finances, recapitalising their banks or addressing the rot at the heart of the single currency – which has left us where we are today........read on