The Eurozone has slid even deeper into crisis (something of an achievement, given where it already was) over the last few days, with Angela Merkel taking a great deal of the blame. Writing in the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman offers up a decent defense of the German chancellor, including this:

“The rest of Europe should be grateful that they have a calm and cautious leader in Berlin. It was bold visionaries such as Mr Kohl who created the euro in the first place – leaving future generations to sort out the subsequent mess.”

“Bold visionaries”: almost always nothing but trouble.

The rest of Rachman’s piece begins, albeit very tentatively, to make the case why Germany should walk from the house of cards that Kohl helped build. That it appeared in the FT, house journal of the EU establishment, says something…