The economist Yanis Varoufakis has an apt metaphor for Europe's latest approach to its economic crisis. Imagine, he says, that your neighbours demanded you do a 100m sprint in under 10 seconds. They whip you, and threaten dire sanctions for flunking. But as August looms and with your times getting worse not better, your taskmasters change the regime. The target remains in place, the threats are just as grave – but the deadline is extended to December. So, have your neighbours loosened their grip? Of course not, says Mr Varoufakis, they have simply extended into the future their "maddened misanthropy, making a virtue out of abject policy failure".
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