The Cost of Europe's Unity

The Leaders of the euro zone bought a very expensive summer holiday at their summit last week: a second bailout for Greece, to the tune of $155 billion. That was the easy part, courtesy of the European taxpayer. With gritted teeth they also made a small step toward establishing a proper fiscal mechanism for the monetary union, by empowering the European Financial and Stability Fund to act preemptively when crises build. In other words, they finally made a proper political move.