To repeat (sorry, but it does seem necessary) what I have said before on these pages: however much she is beaten about the head by blowhards in Brussels, Rome, London and Washington, Angela Merkel cannot let the ECB (in effect, the Bundesbank) print money to soak up the debts of Spain, Greece or Italy. To do that would not simply be to fly in the face of her own electorate’s wishes. (What the hell, you might say – every European political leader is doing that.) It would be to contravene the constitution which was enforced upon Germany by the post-war settlement. In other words, it would be both undemocratic and illegal within the terms of the German nation state which, for all the hokum about European political union, still exists. And there it is.