This will be a lesson in how to make a bad problem even worse. Merkel played this game before and it cost everyone money and now it looks like she's going to do it again. There's a strange fixation on bashing the Greeks by some in Germany and it's not clear why that is.
On the day that European Union finance ministers approved a 78 billion euros ($110 billon) rescue programme for Portugal, Ms Merkel declared that outright debt restructuring before 2013 – when a permanent bail-out fund is in place – would be “incredibly” damaging to the eurozone as a whole.
“It would raise incredible doubts about our credibility if we simply were to change the rules in the middle of the first programme,” causing a flight of investors in government bonds from the euro zone, she told Berlin students.
