Blogging for the BBC, Newsweek’s economics editor neatly sums up a number of the uncomfortable realities underlying the euro bailout. This passage is notable:

We are only beginning to get our heads around the detail of this deal but its geo-strategic and moral implications are clear. Big states have bailed out little states and will demand reforms that change the lifestyle of people in these states forever. Northern Europe has effectively seized control of southern Europe. The eurozone is on a path to becoming a supra-national state-like entity. But because every step of the EU project has been taken by elites, with the populations left to work out what was happening months and years later, we can now trace very accurately where the risk has been transferred to. It has been transferred to politics: will the people of Europe accept the consolidation of the eurozone, with the loss of economic sovereignty that represents? In short, in a matter of two years, we have transferred risk from the banking system to the state finances to the streets. And the risk is only partly dissipated by this transfer.

H/t: Rod Dreher.