‘The malaise in Western Europe is attributable to affluence bought not by economic dynamism but by reckless borrowing. The response of Greece and Italy is to walk away from democracy’

In 1953 Thomas Mann called “not for a German Europe, but a European Germany”. Now we have both—and neither is happy

Greeks have been fiddling the books ever since Agamemnon. Where else do you find such private generosity and public irresponsibility?

‘As Greece prepares to restructure its debt yet again, the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders must resume business’