British and American economists still tend to blame the eurozone crisis on bad policy, and in particular on fiscal austerity and lack of monetary activism. But it is actually more intractable than that. If obligations were mutualised in the way that would normally occur in a single currency regime, things would be fine, but this is out of the question as long as the eurozone remains a collection of separate sovereign nations. Since there is no practical likelihood of federalisation, or even appetite for it, the eurozone is condemned to a kind of locked-in syndrome of helplessness. Eventually, there will have to be a massive, European-wide debt restructuring if the euro is to survive. Such an endgame is years, if not decades, away.