I find it interesting that Merkel was a compliant youth leader in Communist East Germany - a state which was ultimately bailed out by West Germany at massive cost to West Germans and other European states - to a degree that would make a complete bail-out of Greece look small in comparison.

And then she chose to 'identify upward' with the Christian Democrats, in the process throwing her former fellow Ossies under the bus and becoming the token former Ossie politico in German political life. But then forgetting about your earlier political behavior and acting as though it never existed is no more without precedence than it is, in this instance, without moral content.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."