If I am right, who sent this message? Der Spiegel would never act by itself and without coordinating with powerful German policy makers. My sources tell me that these circles are mainly located within the German Finance Ministry and, to a lesser extent, in one or two of the larger banks. In association with Der Spiegel they have been sending tamer messages along similar lines for a while, namely that the Greek debt is not sustainable under the present policy mix (see FTAlphaville's account of that series of messages utilising Der Spiegel as the main conduit).

Having lost patience, once their signals were largely ignored, Germany's Finance Ministry's `people' must have decided to employ the big guns of yesterday's signal. They took a partial truth (that the Greek PM had looked at the potential costs of a Greek exit from the euro), amplified it by omitting to mention all the other scenaria which were considered and, hey presto, a small tempest was unleashed on Europe's leadership. All they then did was to watch the panic perform its miracle. What miracle? Concentrating the mind of Mrs Merkel, Mr Papandreou and assorted ministers on the importance of living, for once, in truth.

More precisely, the message sent by the Spiegel incendiary article was that the policy of fresh expensive loans for insolvent states, combined with savage austerity at a time of deep recession, does not and will not work. That the time for debt restructuring for the eurozone's stressed periphery has come, as has the time for a rational resolution of Europe's banking crisis. To drive their point home, the circles within Germany that saw to it that Spiegel publishes this article illustrated vividly, for Mrs Merkel's and Mr Papandreou's benefit, that there is something far, far worse than a debt restructure: the commencement of a successive elimination of countries from the eurozone that will give rise to magnificent levels of speculation in the money markets as to who comes next and when.