Only Germany can save EMU as contagion turns systemic

 German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned there will be no 'spectacular step' at the EU meeting on Thursday Photo: AP

"We are heading towards fiscal union or break-up," said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. "Talk is no longer enough as the fire threatens to leap over the firebreak into Spain and Italy.

"What the market is worried about is Germany's long-term committment to the euro project. If we see unreserved and absolute backing from the political establishment of Germany, that will be a soothing balm."

Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed in little hurry on Tuesday to convey such a message. There will be no "spectacular step" at the Justus Lipsius building on Thursday; just a "controlled process of gradual steps and measures", she said with unflappable calm. Given the simmering wrath from top to bottom of German society, it may be impossible for her to do much more.

Jens Weidmann, the Bundesbank's president, has made her task that much harder by telling the eurosceptic Bild Zeitung that "nothing would destroy the incentives for a solid budget policy more quickly and more permanently than joint liability for national debts. European and especially German taxpayers would have to answer for the entire state debt of Greece. That would be a step toward a transfer union."

Days earlier he shot down proposals for issuance of eurobonds or use of Europe's rescue fund to buy Spanish and Italian bonds on the open market, crucial steps to prevent Italy and Spain being drawn into the maelstrom. "It has a high cost, limited use, and dangerous secondary effects," he said, departing radically from the script of the European Central Bank.

Such scathing words from the Bundesbank tie Dr Merkel's hands, just as she is tied by a Bundestag motion five weeks ago that imposed strict limits on further bailouts. Above her head hangs a Sword of Damocles, a ruling by her consitutional court in September that may curb or even block German participation in the EU's rescue machinery. The further she goes on Thursday – the further she breaches the "no bailout" clause of the Lisbon Treaty – the greater the risk of a negative ruling.

In essence, this is a soul-searching drama within Germany over its own national destiny and place in Europe, echoed in the Netherlands, Finland and even France. Europe's confusion reflects the schizophrenia of its ancient tribal nations, each faced with the fateful choice of crossing the Rubicon to an EU Treasury and joint government or letting the EU project unravel after half a century.

EU leaders would like to confine their summit to the details of debt buy-backs or "selective defaults" for Greece, or cuts in the penal rate on rescue packages, but the crisis is once again a step ahead of politicians. Fear that Italy and Spain may be tipping into double-dip recessions as global growth falters has changed the landscape, threatening the debt dynamics of both countries.

The International Monetary Fund said there is now "serious risk" of eurozone contagion with "large" potential knock-on effects worldwide. "Market participants remain unconvinced that a sustainable solution is at hand," it said.

Suki Mann from Societe Generale caught the mood in a note to clients, asking whether it is "all over". "Eurozone politicians don't – or don't want to – understand that the eurozone as we know it is on the precipice. Greece appears beyond repair, Italy is on the brink, and the chances are that the euro might be no more very soon," he said.

RBS fears that Europe is on the cusp of "system-wide convulsion" after yields on Spanish 10-year bonds reached post-EMU records of 6.34pc this week, and Italian yields topped 6pc. "We believe that Spain has entered the danger zone for yield levels," said Harvender Sian, the bank's credit strategist, who fears the "point-of-no-return" may be 6.5pc. "Given that Spain [and likely soon Italy] has entered this territory, there is a growing risk that a large systemic risk event is plausible in the near term and if not then in a matter of weeks."

The bank has called for a bail-out fund with €2 trillion of full lending power to stabilise the system, even if this risks pushing German debt levels above 110pc of GDP and causing apoplexy in the Bundestag.

The bond fund Pimco has its own idea: throwing Greece, Ireland and Portugal to the wolves, and concentrating €1 trillion in "overwhelming force" to defend Spain and Italy. That major players should utter such thoughts shows how fast events are moving.

For 18 months the EU has treated the serial crises on the EMU margins as liquidity headaches. It hoped that time would slowly lift the distressed debtors off the reefs, while the penal terms of "Ultima Ratio" attached to bailout loans would deter other EMU states from seeking help. "Shock and Awe" rhetoric would do the rest.

The strategy has failed because it did not acknowledge that the deeper crisis is a North-South structural gap that has left half the eurozone with variants of 1930s debt-deflation, a condition that cannot be solved by austerity measures or by any one country alone.

"We are approaching the endgame for this part of the European sovereign crises: the number of cans that now need kicking down the road would challenge the left foot of Lionel Messi," said Gary Jenkins from Evolution Securities. "The chances are that the EU will only take the step of fiscal union or common bond issuance at one minute to midnight on a weekend when it is clear that the system is close to collapse."

The EU has a long history of muddling through existential crises – though none quite as threatening as this – so it may find some way to fudge fiscal union with a formula that assuages German hawks and lawyers. If all else fails, it can still cajole or order the ECB to undertake mass bond purchases and usher in fiscal union by the back door.

But there is a larger question: does Germany really want to pay the costs of monetary union any longer?

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Stockmarkets bounce as Germany backs sovereign debt rescue policies

 The court's double-edged ruling closes the door on joint-debt issuance in the eurozone or any move towards fiscal union under current treaty law Photo: EPA

Stockmarkets bounced amid relief that the nightmare scenario of a bail-out ban had been averted. However, the court said that there could be no further eurozone rescues without the prior backing of the Bundestag, greatly limiting the ability of any German Chancellor to strike EU deals.

"This was a very tight decision. But it should not be mistakenly interpreted as a constitutional blank cheque authorising further rescue measures," said the court's president, Andreas Vosskuhle.

The ruling saw European shares soar and bond spreads narrow. The FTSE 100 enjoyed its best performance since May 2010, rising 161.75, or 3.1pc, to 5318.59. Greek stocks climbed an eye-watering 8pc, while in Germany the Dax closed up 3.7pc and France's CAC-40 finished 3.6pc higher. The Dow Jones rose more than 2pc to 11371.53 in mid-afternoon trading.

The iTraxx Crossover index or "fear gauge" for credit risk plunged 35 basis points to 729, though it remains near record highs. Spot gold dropped sharply, down $91 to $1,804, on greater risk appetite.

George Soros, writing in the New York Times ahead of the court decision, warned that the eurozone "crisis has the potential to be a lot worse than Lehman Brothers".

The court's double-edged ruling closes the door on joint-debt issuance in the eurozone or any move towards fiscal union under current treaty law. "It is a clear rejection of eurobonds," said Otto Fricke, finance spokesman for the Free Democrats (FDP) in Germany's governing coalition.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ruling validated her rescue policies, and once again vowed to do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of monetary union.

"History has shown that countries with a common currency never wage war against one another, and that is why the euro is far more than just a currency. If the euro fails, Europe fails. It must not fail, and will not fail," she said in an emotional speech.

The judges said the EU's nexus of bail-outs and rescue machinery are allowable under Germany's constitution because they do not entail "automatic" transfers that might undermine German fiscal sovereignty.

However, they stressed that parliament's power to tax and spend is the foundation of German democracy and must not be eroded. The decision gives veto powers to the Bundestag's budget committee, dominated by the Christian Democrats and the FDP.

Finland, the Netherlands and Slovakia are all eyeing variants of this legislative brake, raising further questions about the workability of the eurozone's bail-out fund.

Concern about such moves increased on Wednesday after Ireland's finance minister, Michael Noonan, warned that the eurozone's bail-out fund was too small and complained that progress to implement changes agreed in July to expand its size was "slow". The warning came as the IMF downgraded Ireland's growth forecast for 2011 from 0.6pc to 0.4pc.

Those views were echoed by UK leader David Cameron and EU President Herman Van Rompuy who met to discuss issues facing Europe. A Downing Street spokesman said the two agreed that the "immediate priority is to implement" the July agreements.

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EU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself

 Chancellor Angela Merkel would risk popular fury if she had to raise fresh funds for eurozone debtors at a time of welfare cuts in Germany. 

Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on German, French and Dutch bonds have surged over recent days, rising significantly above the levels of non-EMU states in Scandinavia.

"Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself," said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. "This is frightening people. You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders. People have terrible memories of 1948 and 1923 when they lost their savings."

The refrain was picked up this week by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. "We're not swimming in money, we're drowning in debts," he told the Bundestag.

While Germany's public and private debt is not extreme, it is very high for a country on the cusp of an acute ageing crisis. Adjusted for demographics, Germany is already one of the most indebted nations in the world.

Reports that EU officials are hatching plans to double the size of EU's €440bn (£373bn) rescue mechanism have inevitably caused outrage in Germany. Brussels has denied the claims, but the story has refused to die precisely because markets know the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) cannot cope with the all too possible event of a triple bail-out for Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

EU leaders hoped this moment would never come when they launched their "shock and awe" fund last May. The pledge alone was supposed to be enough. But EU proposals in late October for creditor "haircuts" have set off capital flight, or a "buyers' strike" in the words of Klaus Regling, head of the EFSF.

Those at the coal-face of the bond markets are certain Portugal will need a rescue. Spain is in danger as yields on 10-year bonds punch to a post-EMU record of 5.2pc.

Axel Weber, Bundesbank chief, seemed to concede this week that Portugal and Spain would need bail-outs when he said that EMU governments may have to put up more money to bolster the fund. "€750bn should be enough. If not, we could increase it. The governments will do what is necessary," he said.

Whether governments will, in fact, write a fresh cheque is open to question. Chancellor Angela Merkel would risk popular fury if she had to raise fresh funds for eurozone debtors at a time of welfare cuts in Germany. She faces a string of regional elections where her Christian Democrats are struggling.

Mr Weber rowed back on Thursday saying that a "worst-case scenario" of triple bail-outs would require a €140bn top-up for the fund. This assurance is unlikely to soothe investors already wondering how Italy could avoid contagion in such circumstances.

"Italy is in a lot of pain," said Stefano di Domizio, from Lombard Street Research. "Bond yields have been going up 10 basis points a day and spreads are now the highest since the launch of EMU. We're talking about €2 trillion of debt so Rome has to tap the market often, and that is the problem."

The great question is at what point Germany concludes that it cannot bear the mounting burden any longer. "I am worried that Germany's authorities are slowly losing sight of the European common good," said Jean-Claude Juncker, chair of Eurogroup finance ministers.

Europe's fate may be decided soon by the German constitutional court as it rules on a clutch of cases challenging the legality of the Greek bail-out, the EFSF machinery, and ECB bond purchases.

"There has been a clear violation of the law and no judge can ignore that," said Prof Hankel, a co-author of one of the complaints. "I am convinced the court will forbid future payments."

If he is right – we may learn in February – the EU debt crisis will take a dramatic new turn.

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Germany defiant as Europe suffers

Yields on 10-year Spanish bonds rose briefly to 5.6pc on Wednesday.

Bond traders say the country may have trouble raising funds until it becomes clear whether the European Central Bank will buy Spanish debt.

In continued tension across the eurozone periphery, rioters in Athens set fire to cars and beat a former minister with clubs outside the parliament building.

The violence follows ugly scenes in Rome the day before when protests over education cuts erupted into street battles, leaving 100 injured in Italy’s worst riots for 30 years.

One police officer was nearly dragged to his death. Italy’s press said urban guerrillas had infiltrated the protest, prompting fears of a return to the 1970s terrorism of Left and Right.

More peacefully, Ireland’s Dail approved the country’s €85bn rescue deal by six votes but anger is building over the terms. Investors fear that the next government will repudiate the deal after fresh elections.

Michael Noonan, finance chief of opposition Fine Gael, said Ireland should walk away from the senior debt of rescued banks.

“You have the obscene situation where the poorest of the poor, through their taxes and welfare cuts, are being asked to guarantee the speculation of investors in hedge funds. Ireland has no moral or legal obligation to cover this debt,” he said.

Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, accused Fine Gael of playing with fire. “Those who think we can unilaterally renege on senior bondholders against the wishes of the ECB are living in fantasy land,” he said.

In Berlin, the Merkel government so far shows no sign of wanting to play the good European.

Foreign minister Guido Westerwelle issued a veiled threat that Germany may walk away from the project if the rest of the EU tries to bounce the country into a debt union. “Anyone who talks about entering a union of financial transfers is putting support for Europe at risk, especially in the countries that must bear most of the burden,” he said.

Germany’s political elite is bitterly divided about how to handle EU demands.

Social Democrat leader Frank-Walter Steinmeier accused Mrs Merkel of a “pathetic abdication” of her duties.

“This is no answer to the deepest European crisis in my lifetime,” he told the Bundestag.

He said Europe must lance the boil once and for all. “Greece, Ireland and Portugal urgently need to be released from a substantial part of their debt. Painful spending cuts ... will not allow them to escape their debt trap.

“We must also ensure that solvent member states, such as Spain and Italy, are not drawn into the downward spiral of financial speculation. We must guarantee the entire outstanding eurozone debt of stable countries,” he wrote.

Germany’s opposition has just committed itself to a policy that would saddle the country with up to €4 trillion of fresh liabilities, a repeat of German reunification on a much bigger scale. This is a radical departure.

Mr Steinmeier’s proposal is a gamble that Spain (or Italy) would never need to draw such support. It assumes that Spain is fundamentally solvent. This is a hotly disputed subject.

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said Germany must give up much of its sovereignty to the EU and accept the burden of costly “reparations” if it is to save the euro and avoid pushing southern Europe “into the abyss”. He said Germany had caused “horrors in the past” and had a special duty to uphold the European ideal. Petty-minded “tacticalists” who seem willing to let the EU fall apart will leave a catastrophic historical legacy, he said.

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Germany faces its awful choice as Spain wobbles

“All debts of Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland will be fused immediately with German debt; a single treasury will control spending, and issue euro-bonds for all Euroland,” or some such formula.

This is the sort of game-changer that may now be required to save EMU and the Monnet dream. Germany must contemplate doing for Euroland what it has done for its own Volk in the East over the last 20 years – pay big transfers – or watch its strategic investment in the post-War order of Europe collapse with a bang, and in hideous acrimony. Tough call.

It is clear to those working in the bond markets that the debt crisis in the EMU periphery is nearing danger point, and risks spiralling out of control as quickly as the Lehman-AIG-Fannie-Freddie crisis in 2008.

Prof Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, said last week that Portugal is likely to need a rescue before the end of the year and that Spain will follow “soon after”.

Klaus Baader from Societe Generale issued a report the same day entitled “Eurozone sovereign debt crisis: next stop Spain”. He suggests that the EU bail-out fund raises money to buy Spanish bonds pre-emptively. Nice idea, but what would the German constitutional court have to say about that?

At Deutsche Bank, Thomas Mayer said Spain might soon need a flexible credit from the IMF. Informed opinion has turned.

Markets are already pricing a 23pc chance of default in Spain (34pc for Portugal, and 39pc for Ireland). If the country needs a rescue, it instantly exhausts the credible financial and political firepower of the EMU system.

The EU’s €440bn (£372bn) rescue fund “looks small, very small, too small”, says Dr Buiter. Alleged plans for a double-up are circulating “en coulisses” in the Berlaymont, but Berlin squashed the idea as “completely over the top”.

In any case, we are beyond the point where escalating bluffs can achieve anything. Markets doubt that it makes sense to heap further debt on states that cannot service existing debt.

The EU strategy of hair-shirt austerity and 1930s debt-deflation for crippled economies has been tested in Ireland, and has led to the same doleful outcome as the 1930s. Tax revenues have collapsed. The deficit has hardly shrunk at all. The policy is based on mechanical theories of the “fiscal multiplier”, and is patently self-defeating. Sinn Fein’s landslide victory in Donegal is a condign response to this academic hocus pocus.

Should the EU really impose a 6.7pc interest charge on Ireland’s bail-out loans, it should not be surprised if the new Irish government in January walks away from the whole stinking arrangement, and pulls the plug on Europe’s banking system. Many might cheer.

However, it is Spain that determines EMU’s fate. Spanish premier Jose Luis Zapatero said there is “absolutely” no chance that his country would need a rescue. “Those investors shorting Spain are making a big mistake.”

As Keynes once said, blaming economic crises on speculators is “not far removed, intellectually, from ascription of cattle disease to the “evil eye”.

Has Mr Zapatero read the IMF’s devastating Article IV report on his own country? It states that the government’s “gross financing needs” for 2011 will be €226bn, or 21pc of GDP. “Spain’s financing requirements are large and, retaining market confidence will be critical. Spain has exhausted its fiscal space. Targets should be made more credible.”

Madrid must attract €226bn of good money from Spanish savers, German pension funds, French banks, Japanese life insurers, and China’s central bank, so that an incompetent government (this one happens to be socialist, but the Greek conservatives were worse) can continue to run budget deficits of 7pc to 8pc of GDP in 2011. Why should they lend a single pfennig, having already been told by EU leaders that they will face scalping if Spain ever needs a rescue?

“The economy is highly indebted and has one of the most negative international investment positions (IIP) among advanced countries,” said the IMF. Its external accounts are under water by 80pc of GDP.

Furthermore, Spanish banks will need to roll over €220bn in 2011 and 2012, according to Enrique Goñi, head of Banca Cívica. “We’re in the antechamber of a new liquidity crisis. We’re living through a financial pre-collapse,” he said.

Now, before yet more Iberian brickbats fly my way, let me say that Spain’s public debt will be a modest 63pc of GDP this year (though total debt is over 270pc, which is what matters). The savings rate is high.

The Banco de Espana has been heroic, but then it needed to be given that Spain no longer has control over its policy levers. The country had to contend with real interest rates of minus 2pc during the long boom, and cannot offset the horrendous bust with monetary stimulus or a properly valued peseta.

Spanish readers like to point out that British failings are comparable or worse. Whether or not that is true, it is irrelevant. Britain is not a prisoner of EMU. You might as well compare chalk and cheese.

We can argue whether the overhang of unsold properties in Spain will reach 1.5m, or six years’ supply, as claimed by Madrid consultants RR de Acuna, but there is little doubt that the "Cajas" and smaller banks have played a game of “extend and pretend” to disguise the true scale of losses on their property loans.

This then is the headache facing Angela Merkel. By the time she inherited the EMU debacle, imbalances were already chronic, and she certainly does not have popular mandate for Churchillian gestures right now.

Even so, it is remarkable that Berlin is not even allowing the European Central Bank to pursue the first and obvious line of defence, which is to calm eurozone bond markets by using its financial stability powers to buy Irish, Portuguese, and Spanish debt on a nuclear scale.

As the storm rages, the ECB is tightening monetary policy by draining liquidity (the Eonia rate is up from 0.4pc to 0.8pc since mid-year) and by signalling that they may soon shut the lending window that keeps Greek, Irish and Iberian banks alive.

Frankfurt is doing this even though the eurozone’s M3 money supply contracted on a month-to-month basis in both September and October, as did private credit. Is this just incompetence, or is somebody pushing PIGS into the slaughterhouse?

As for Britain’s offer in 1940, it is hard to see how such a union could ever have worked over time. It was rejected by the French cabinet, though premier Paul Reynaud pleaded in favour. One Gallic patriot said that utter destruction was better than becoming a “dominion of the British Empire”.

By the same token, today’s eurozone patriots might ask whether it is really worth giving up ancient sovereignty to keep a currency.

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France and Germany veto increase in EU rescue fund

Jose Barroso, head of the European Commission, called on EU leaders to boost the firepower of the EU's €440bn (£366bn) bail-out fund and beef up its role, allowing it to intervene with pre-emptive bond purchases to help states under threat.

"It is important for the markets to know that Eurozone leaders are committed to do whatever is necessary," he said, hoping for action as soon as early February.

He also proposed a "new phase of European integration" with far-reaching oversight of the budgets, pensions, labour markets, and trade flows of EU states to prevent a recurrence of the imbalances that led to the EMU debt crisis.

Mr Barroso said the fund boost was a "precautionary" move, not directed at any one country. The gambit is risky since it may be taken by investors as a sign that Brussels fears imminent contagion to Spain, deemed too big for the current fund.

The response in Paris and Berlin was chilly. "We think the fund is big enough," said Francois Baroin, France's budget minister. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the bail-out mechanism was "nowhere near exhaustion", adding curtly that she did not wish to debate the matter "any further".

Mrs Merkel is wary of attempts by Brussels to bounce her country into an EU debt union, or 'Transferunion' as it is described luridly by Germany's press. Such moves may breach the German constitution.

The dispute overshadowed a well-covered auction of €1.25bn of Portuguese debt, including 10-year bonds at 6.72pc, back below the 7pc danger line. The sale set off a surge in bank stocks in Lisbon, and was greeted with relief across the EMU perihpery. Spain's Ibex index jumped 5.3pc.

"The auction was a success from all angles," said Portugal's premier, Jose Socrates. "We do not need help: we can solve our own problems."

Gaven Nolan from Markit said purchases of Portuguese debt by the European Central Bank over the last two days had created good mood music but he doubted whether the bond sale would quell talk of a bailout.

"It didn't in the case of Ireland – which was fully funded for months ahead at the time of its bailout – and is unlikely to do so in the case of Portugal. The auction might have bought Portugal some time: it won't divert attention away from low growth prospects," he said.

The interest costs remain crippling for an economy facing contraction of 1.3pc next year, and scant recovery in 2012. The debt trajectory is precarious. The budget deficit will beat the target of 7.3pc of GDP in 2011, but only by use of pension transfers from Portugal Telecom.

Mark Ostwald from Monument Securities said confusion over the EU bail-out fund is a reminder of EMU's political limits. "We have gone nowhere since the show of unity in December. 'Mr Market' is still saying to EU leaders that they must come up with a mechanism to transfer money from the rich core to the periphery. We are no closer to that," he said.

Charles Dumas at Lombard Street Research said Germany faces an impossible demand. "If the German people go along with plans to prop up the economies of Club Med to save the euro, it means that they will have to pay subsidies for the next decade or two that significantly exceed what they have had to pay for German reunification," he said.

Separately, EU officials have floated proposals for a bank tax to fund the EU's permanent bail-out fund from 2013 onwards. An EU source said member states are "very cautious" about such an intrusion into fiscal sovereignty.

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Germany fuels EMU debt crisis with haircut demands

The German document said "collective action clauses" (CAC) should be introduced into all EMU bonds issued from next year. These clauses open the way for creditor haircuts in cases where countries need a rescue.

The planned date is even sooner than the 2013 target announced by EU leaders in October's summit, which itself came as a nasty shock to the bond markets. It gives the eurozone's struggling debtors far less time to clear up their public finances. The plans will be aired at the EU summit in December.

Elena Salgado, Spain's finance minister, warned Germany that the proposal risked making matters worse at a delicate moment. "We don't think this idea is quite appropriate right now, including after 2013," she said.

Mrs Salgado said there was "an abyss" separating her country from Ireland and Greece. "We have a solid financial sector. Austerity and reforms are producing exactly the results we forecast," she said, insisting that the country was the victim of a "speculative attack".

However, iFlow data from the Bank of New York Mellon shows a major withdrawal of foreign funds from Spanish debt markets, mostly coming from "real money" investors. "The flows look rather similar to what we saw in Greece," said Neil Mellor, the bank's currency strategist.

Portugal had the added strain on Wednesday of a near total shutdown of its airports, harbours, trains and buses as unions launched their first general strike in 22 years, protesting against the latest austerity budget and wage cuts of 5pc for public workers.

"Sacrifices by workers is not the way out of the crisis," said Manuel Carvalho da Silva, of Portugal's CGTP union, echoing a refrain now heard in a string of European countries.

Jürgen Michels from Citigroup said Germany's haircut proposals would make it much harder for struggling Club Med states to raise money, risking a self-fulfilling crisis. "Portugal and Spain would be probably forced to tap the current European Financial Stability Facility, which could bring the facility to its limit and even exceed it," he warned.

Mr Michels said the results would be so destructive that Germany is unlikely to win EU backing for the idea.

However, Chancellor Angela Merkel has already announced that she will "not back down" on demands for creditor pain. In an odd statement this week she said investors had made money "speculating on the bankruptcy of countries" and must now share the burden of rescue costs.

Critics say Mrs Merkel seems unwilling to acknowledge the difference between two vastly different types of players: hedge funds who are "short" eurozone debt and therefore stand to benefit from her policy; and the pension funds, life insurers and savers (many of them German) who bought southern European and Irish debt in good faith and now stand to lose.

There is confusion in the markets over how different types of debt will be treated. The Irish government has already enforced an 80pc haircut on the junior debt of Anglo Irish Bank but insists that senior debt is sacrosanct. That guarantee is now worthless since Fianna Fail is certain to lose the election in January.

Opposition leaders have not clarified how they will handle the issue. However, it is becoming ever harder to explain to the Irish people why they should suffer austerity in order to ensure that foreign holders of damaged Irish bank debt should lose nothing. The country's Labour Party already favours burden-sharing. The concern is that once Ireland cracks on senior debt, the dam will break across Europe.

Greg Gibbs from RBS said the European Central Bank (ECB) had helped cause the latest eurozone eruption by draining liquidity too soon and signalling that it aimed to end the "addiction" of struggling Irish and Club Med banks to its cheap funding window sooner rather than later.

"This tough stance is reigniting a eurozone debt crisis. The ECB needs to rethink its plans," he said. The RBS team said the central bank should dramatically increase its purchase of eurozone debt, especially Spanish debt, starting with €100bn sovereign and corporate bonds.

José Luis Martínez Campuzano, Citigroup's economist in Spain, also faulted the ECB for letting matters get out of hand. "We have a situation where bodies that should be playing a key role are sitting on the sidelines repeating messages that have little to do with reality and the true risks ahead. That is the case with the ECB," he said.

However, it is unclear whether the ECB has the firepower – or the legal mandate – to carry out the sort of bond purchases seen in the US, where the US government stands behind the Federal Reserve.

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Germany must choose EMU fusion or fission

All that has occurred so far is that Irish and Greek taxpayers have taken on fresh debt so that creditors do not crystallise losses. It remains a disguised rescue for North European banks and insurers. As the Left always warned, monetary union is a “bankers’ ramp”.

Perhaps this bank rescue is necessary to buy time for a fragile financial system. We saw instant contagion through half of Europe when Mrs Merkel called for bondholder haircuts in October. It was she who clumsily set off the final Irish crisis. But if EU banks are so vulnerable, how did so many pass their stress tests in July?

Ireland perhaps has a theoretical chance of surviving Merkel’s penal rates. How its democracy will react to this is an open question. A Fine Gael-led government may be elected this week. We will find out how long Ireland is willing to suffer debt servitude to pay German, British, and Belgian banks.

Greece has no theoretical chance. Nobody other than those paid to apologise for this travesty of a policy believes Greece can escape a compound interest spiral under an EU-IMF regime that will push public debt to 150pc of GDP.

The inspectors know this, hence pressure on Athens to sell €50bn of assets, including water and land. This too is becoming neuralgic. “Unacceptable behaviour,” said premier George Papandreou. Greece will not bargain away its “birthright and dignity”.

Nor do I believe that Portugal can regain its footing in EMU with combined public and private debt at 330pc of GDP and a current account deficit stuck near 9pc. Whether or not Portugal accepts a formal rescue has become irrelevant. It is already on life-support from the European Central Bank, which had to intervene yet again last week after Portugal’s five-year yields hit a post-EMU record. A rescue merely switches that support to a different EU body, the Stability Facility (EFSF).

A few months ago, capital flight might have spread instantly from Portugal to Spain. Events have since moved on. Spain’s industrial orders and exports are recovering. Its fiscal deficit is narrowing fast. Its bond spreads no longer move in rhythm with Lisbon’s troubles.

Global growth has alleviated the liquidity crisis. I share the view of Albert Edwards at Societe Generale that this is a deformed economic recovery built on extreme levels of government debt across the West and highly-questionable use of monetary policy to inflate stock markets, but it may take some time for the chickens to come home to roost.

What continues, regardless, is a chronic crisis of varying degrees in peripheral EMU nations that have lost competitiveness and are stuck in a slowly-tightening debt trap. High-interest loans are no help for insolvent countries. They need debt forgiveness and years of subsidies, if they are to muddle through in EMU. Is this forthcoming?

Werner Hoyer, Germany’s Europe minister, said last week that EU federal bonds would be "politically unrealistic and legally impossible", fearing the wrath of Germany’s constitutional court.

Mrs Merkel appears ready to back a boost in the EFSF’s lending power to €500bn, so long as other states swallow her “Competitiveness Pact”. This Diktat requires non-Germans to reshape their societies in Germany’s mould. They have told her to go to Hell. Even Belgium’s premier said the German demarche was outrageous.

She has not agreed to reduce the EFSF’s penal rates, or allow it to help crippled states buy back their own bonds on the open market at a discount. This may change. It has not happened yet.

She has certainly not agreed to any form of transfers and cannot do so given the fierce mood of her Free Democrats (FDP) and Bavarian allies. She would not dream of accepting that Germany should do for Club Med and Ireland what it has already done for its own kin in the Eastern Lander.

Western Germany has shelled out €1.7 trillion to the East since reunification 20 years ago. It is still paying €60bn annually, and has not yet achieved viable convergence. Transfer costs are docked from the pay of each German worker under 'Solidaritätszuschlag’, which rises to 5.5pc of income tax.

There may be some sort of “breakthrough” at next month’s EU summit – perhaps on EFSF bond purchases - but Mrs Merkel is deeply constrained at home. Comments by Bundesbank chief Axel Weber that he could not serve as ECB chief because the institution had strayed from orthodoxy and left him in a “minority” were frankly calamitous.

There can no longer be any doubt that Germany has lost control of the ECB, that the implicit contract under which the German people agreed to give up the D-Mark has been breached.

The eight judges of the Verfassungsgericht ruled on the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 that EMU failure to ensure monetary stability in Germany would violate the Grundgesetz and either force Germany to change its constitution (very hard) or leave the euro. Is Dr Weber inviting the court to plunge the dagger when it rules, perhaps soon?

The Weber debacle comes at a bad moment. Germany is already in full cyclical upswing and needs higher rates, even as the South languishes in a slump. Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs said Germany had decoupled from Europe, becoming the first “developed BRIC” as supplier in chief to China’s industrial revolution. “The Germans are going to have to accept 3pc inflation, even if they don’t know it yet,” he said.

Or 4pc, or 5pc. Germany’s producer price inflation reached 5.7pc in January. The country is hitting capacity limits. Yet ECB rates are still 1pc. This has the makings of an almighty punch-up.

Global recovery does not end the North-South rift that lies at the root of the eurozone crisis. It merely changes the features of it, and shifts the focus of stress.

EMU travails will goes on, and on, until Germany – and the others – understands that it has been lured into a Monet trap: it cannot both be a member of monetary union and remain a self-governing sovereign nation. In politics as in life, you must choose.

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