Angela Merkel would be answerable for Greek eurozone exit

“If you break it, you own it,” former US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President George W Bush before his invasion of Iraq.

Whether it will ever be fair to blame Angela Merkel for ‘breaking’ Greece is debatable.

But if the eurozone’s weakest link does default this week and is eventually forced out of the single currency, it seems inevitable that the German chancellor, Europe’s most powerful leader, will ‘own’ the Greek problem and that a decision to let Athens go would profoundly shape her legacy.