"The single currency is close to collapse - Telegraph
With Europe on the brink of a disaster, the euro must be reconstituted as an entity based on economic reality, not ideological folly.
More than half of the money lent to Greece so far by the International Monetary Fund and European nations has gone to repay bondholders, a transfer of billions of dollars from taxpayers around the world to European banks and pension funds that invested in the troubled Mediterranean nation.
Standard & Poor's (S&P) is to warn that a double-dip recession in Europe would imperil France's AAA rating and set off a string of downgrades across Southern Europe, undermining the EU's debt crisis strategy.
Europe’s big banks will be forced to find €108bn ($150bn) of fresh capital over the next six to nine months under a deal to strengthen the banking system agreed by European Union finance ministers.
As the UK discovered to its cost during its ill-fated membership of the ERM, it is tough to impossible to be in any form of currency union with Germany.
