Usually I stay clear of connotation-rich German words that have no real equivalent in other languages. Their purpose is to obfuscate. But there is one that describes the eurozone’s crisis management rather well. It is überfordert. The nearest English translation is “overwhelmed”, or “not on top of something”, but those are not quite the same. You can be overwhelmed one day, and on top the next. Überfordert is as hopeless as Dante’s hell. It has an intellectual and an emotional component. If you are it today, you are it tomorrow.
