The International Monetary Fund, which under Christine Lagarde, the former French finance minister, has shown undue favour to the Greeks and to the idea of the “irreversibility” of the euro, has at last had an emperor’s new clothes moment and pronounced that the deal won’t work. The IMF knows there must be a massive default on Greek debt to give the country any chance of recovery, and that the proposed bailout is inadequate. The EU, which must pretend the project is salvageable, chooses to ignore these strictures. As I wrote last week, it is all about saving the face of countless economic illiterates.