Joshua Goldstein attempts to find it:
Greece needed a new government and it got one. As prime minister, the technocrat Lucas Papademos this week replaces the old politico George Papandreou whose grandfather and father were prime minister before him. I mean, enough is enough. It was all high-drama politics, and a big mess, but look what came out of it — change. Italy has needed a new government for quite a while, and it too will get one. And the European Union has needed a new way to deal with the contradiction at the heart of the euro currency — the crazy idea that sovereign states can control their individual fiscal policies (taxation and budgets) while merging their monetary policies (currency and inflation). I don’t know what solution is going to emerge, but I do know that it won’t happen without the kind of big crisis we’re in the middle of now.
Ryan Avent, on the other hand, fears the worst. Kevin Drum is somewhere in the middle. My view is that at some point, Germany is going to rescue the euro, and provide the funds necessary for it. Merkel will not let the European project die on her watch. Her country's entire postwar identity is rooted in it. And so a project designed to put a line against any new wars, after Germany's serial aggression, will end up making Europe a German-based, German-run and German-funded country.
History has its ironies, does it not? But Britain, alone of the major countries, stands apart. Plus ca change.
(Photo: A pedestrian walks past a shop selling all goods for one euro on November 10, 2011 in Madrid, Spain. The current Eurozone debt crisis has left Spain with crippling economic problems. Mounting debts, record unemployment figures and the recent credit rating downgrade is leaving the country facing further economic stagnation. The people of Spain are preparing to go to the polls for a general election which will be held on November 20, 2011. By Denis Doyle/Getty Images.)
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