Eurozone lurches ever closer towards an end game

WHEN the EU leaders agreed a deal a few short weeks back to relieve the pressures on Greece in particular and the eurozone in general, sensible people recognised that this would only bring short-term relief.

In the longer-term is was always inevitable that the unsustainable level of debt in a number of the zone’s countries would ensure that the crisis would not go away. However, even those same sensible people have been taken somewhat aback by the rapidity and ferocity of the instability that has erupted this week. The short-term relief has indeed proved to be just that.

This weekend the eurozone is in a deep crisis and is lurching ever closer to some sort of end game. Unfortunately, it is still very hard to say what exactly that end game might look like. Market declines this week have been as dramatic as those seen in the midst of the sub-prime crisis in 2007 and 2008, and the fear and uncertainty that have so firmly grasped markets is very unnerving and unfortunately is not quite familiar.