There's enough idiocy on display in Brussels, Frankfurt and Basel without needing to blame the City.

If the City (and Wall St) impinge on the Eurozone situation, should that be ignored? When it's pointed out that either rating is a superfluous function, or should not be in the hands of private City/Wall Street corporations, the response is invariably, "the rating agencies didn't cause the euro crisis". No, but they have arguably exacerbated it at every turn by publishing (often correct) analyses and consequent rating changes with an acuity and rigour that were so strikingly absent concerning American financial bubble-and-fraud in the lead-up to the first leg of this crisis. Is it absurd to find logical that US interests (and those of Britain, the GBP having been sidekick to the dollar for decades) lie in avoiding the loss, in the financial crisis, of the world-reserve-currency status of the dollar, and therefore in seizing an opportunity to weaken the relative status of the main contender for replacement? Or that global financial capitalism (to a considerable extent offshore but pre-eminently centred on New York and London, currently at least) abhors the regulatory tendency the EU represents at world level?

Why place a theoretical ring-fence round continental Europe (where, I'm not denying, our "leaders" bear huge responsibility for driving us over the cliff) and ignore global power struggles? If, tomorrow, the euro fell apart and our countries were severally sovereign, would those power struggles have no relevance?