Sir, Lawrence Summers is certainly correct in asserting that the right focus of the European countries must be on restoring economic growth if they are to restore fiscal sustainability (“Growth not austerity is the best...

With the bursting of the US housing market bubble in 2007-08, praise for Alan Greenspan soon turned into almost universal condemnation. It is all too likely that a similar fate awaits Jean-Claude Trichet as the euro unravels over the next year or two.

Rather than engaging in wishful thinking about the relative merits of greater fiscal and political union, Europe's leaders should now be seriously thinking about plan B.

In going along in May 2010 with the European charade that Greece did not have a solvency problem, was the IMF really standing for the proposition that the laws of economics do not and will not give way to political considerations?

A potential European banking crisis would spill over to the US financial system, which has very close links to the European banking system.

With each passing day, Greece's economic and political malaise deepens despite one massive International Monetary Fund-European Union bailout package after another to keep that country afloat.

Europe's economy looks like it will continue to get worse, before it gets better.

As the European debt crisis now knocks on the Italy and Spain's door, it is well to recall that the Euro was a flawed idea from its very inception. The following considerations make it highly improbable that the Euro will survive in its present form by end-2012.