They can, of course, bail out anybody important (NB: "Important" means "important to Angela Merkel," not "important to the national interest"). That was always within their capacity, and this whole theatre with the three- and four-letter agencies has been about concealing the bailout from the internal surplus countries' taxpayers and fraudulently cooking up a crisis to impose even tighter adherence to the Grief and Stupidity Pact.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.