Source:
NYTBERLIN — As Europe struggles to reverse a plunge in financial confidence, the world waits for Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, to make a fundamental choice. She, more than any other European politician, will have to either summon the leadership to rescue the euro or concede that the political will is not there.
Mrs. Merkel, 57, faces far-reaching decisions about how to deal definitively with the debt crisis in Europe and, more immediately, whether to allow Greece to default or even to leave the currency union. American officials fear that if she does not act more decisively, bank lending could freeze up and the result would be another sharp financial downturn on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Events appear to be forcing Mrs. Merkel to tip her hand. With the latest market assault this week on French financial institutions, the spillover from the debt crisis has now reached the German border. With first Italy and now France affected, problems once dismissed as confined to the distant periphery of Greece and Portugal have arrived at the core of Europe, and with them unavoidable questions about the continent’s future.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/world/europe/13germany.html?hp
Bang the drum slowly...