It may be, as Martin Wolf argues (today’s FT), that continuous unlimited support for any and all of its members is the only way of avoiding the collapse of the Eurozone. In the present Corvid-bedevilled environment such a structure may well endure for some while (and a prolongation of a form of the status quo, even under extremely distorted conditions, will always appeal to the functionaries in Brussels).

Yet such a ‘solution’, if it may be so termed, will, as Mr. Wolf admits, condemn Italy and Greece for sure, Spain and Portugal almost certainly and probably in due course France, to perpetual beggary. It will do nothing to enable these countries to return to durable growth and without this membership of the Eurozone has become an economic, political and social shirt of Nessus.

For Germany, leaving the Eurozone would indeed be a huge shock but it may be time to contemplate German exit as a preferable solution to the central economic flaw which has beset the Eurozone since its creation: the unbridgeable gap between the economic capabilities of the Zone’s northern and southern members.