The eurozone has little to smile about
Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was the earliest to recognise Greece's insolvency. More recently, Clemens Fuest, president of the German finance ministry's advisory committee, declared that restructuring, the polite word for default, is inevitable. To which the widely respected director of London-based Centre for European Reform, Charles Grant, adds, "Most intelligent people know there has to be a significant restructuring to ease the burden on Greece, and we're not talking about a painless extension of maturities, but wiping away a large portion of the debt."