German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s expected defense of soundness, solidity and stability at the Davos conference this week represents only the top of a very spiky iceberg toward which the monetary ship of the European single currency is ponderously steaming. The confused and confusing imbroglio around a barely avoidable Greek sovereign default is rapidly taking on a nightmarish hue. At worst, in a few weeks or months, part of economic and monetary union (EMU) may find itself in a legal and political limbo, with one smallish but important country, Greece, hooked on the fiendishly difficult question of whether it is ... (full story)