Angela merkel

That's a more relevant question that you might think. Despite European leaders talking for ages about the nonsensical notion of the EU 'speaking with one voice' after the Lisbon Treaty, the situation is much more confused today ever. No fewer than six people purport to speak officially for the Euro, while people actually tend to listen to two different leaders altogether. There is ECB chief Mario Draghi, but also Jose Manuel Barrosso, the Commission President; his colleague Oli Rehn, the Commissioner for Monetary Affairs; Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the Eurogroup; Klaus Regling, head of the EFSF; and finally Herman Van Rompuy.

The punchline to yesterday's eurosummit comes in the very first paragraph of the official statement, released in the darkness of morning: "The euro continues to rest on solid fundamentals." Now that you've brushed away the tears from that one, what was it that was actually agreed upon in the end? The main measure is effectively a fiscal target for Greece: its national debt, expected to peak at around 180 per cent of GDP in 2013, will come down to 120 per cent by 2020. And this will be achieved by cutting the value of bonds held by private investors in half, alongside further waves of privitisation and Greek frugality. Brussels will strengthen its "monitoring capacity on the ground," to ensure that Athens abides by these strictures.

So much rot has been said about the Eurozone crisis that you do wonder whether Merkel, Sarkozy et al have come to believe their own spiel. This is an economic problem and it can’t be solved by political will. Greece is bust and several French, German and Dutch banks were stupid enough to lend €130 billion to the Greek government that they're not going to get back. All the summits in the world cannot change this simple fact. These crisis talks are about bailouts for banks, not bail outs for Greeks. BNP Paribas is in for €37bn. Commerzbank of Germany is owed €15bn. And if Greece defaults, then insurance claims are triggered.

It was something of a mystery. Emergency conference calls about the future of the Eurozone were being made yesterday, but there was no news of those discussions. As it turned out, this was for the best of all possible reasons: there was no news to report. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy announced no new measures to alleviate the sovereign debt crisis; rather, they merely declared “solidarity” with Greece and assured the markets that Greece would not be forced from the single currency. Their words seem to have assuaged the markets for the moment, but only the most brazen optimist would bet on the rally being long lived.

Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and George Papandreou are in crisis talks about Greek debt. There are rumours that they are preparing an "orderly default" for Greece. But, officially, Merkel is still pressing ahead with implementing the existing Greek debt deals. This meeting also has a domestic context for Merkel. According to the FT, she is determined to stamp on the growing disquiet within her governing coalition over the Eurozone crisis and is pleading for calm resolve. It remains to be seen if she succeeds.  The danger of contagion within the Eurozone remains and concerns about the exposure of French banks persist, which is doubly worrying for Nicolas Sarkozy given the proximity of French banks to the French state.

The Eurozone’s political crisis is deepening. Further to the news that individual member states were seeking their own bilateral deals with Greece to insure their taxpayers’ money from default, the FT reports that disagreements are emerging over how these deals should be conducted. Holland objects that Finland’s accord with Athens relies on Greece using EU bailout funds as collateral. “The Netherlands is no supporter of this proposal,” Jan Kees de Jager, the Dutch finance minister, said. “It is not compatible with the principle of equal treatment of all euro countries.

Banks and financial institutions endured a painful day’s trading, following Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement yesterday that the Eurozone should adopt a ‘Tobin tax’, a charge on financial transactions. Once again, M&S chose piecemeal changes over the grand structural scheme desired by markets. The Tobin tax was just one proposal of three. The other two were: to create “genuine economic governance of the Eurozone” under, for the moment, EU President Herbert van Rompuy. The second: to impose a ‘Golden Rule’ on the budgets of Eurozone members. The ‘Golden Rule’ will bind national parliaments to agree to limits on national debt levels and impose statutory requirements on mastering budget deficits.

The American historian Walter Russell-Mead has a cynical — but very possibly accurate — take on what the French are trying to persuade the Germans to accept with their plan for Eurobonds: 'France’s clear short term goal is to commit Germany to underwrite debts from weak EU states.  That not only staves off a crisis that threatens to engulf France; by putting Germany on as a co-signer for Greek, Italian and Spanish loans, France will ensure that Germany’s credit rating will not be better than France’s. The French will accept almost any German rules to limit the ability of countries like Greece to run up new debts.