In his definitive Financial Times series on the euro currency crisis, Peter Spiegel tells the story of a tearful German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejecting a U.S.-French proposal to use central bank reserves to backstop the beleaguered common currency. The drama took place in November 2011 on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit hosted by then-French President Nicholas Sarkozy. According to Spiegel — unknown to the Germans — Sarkozy and Barack Obama had hatched a plan in which the Germans and other European Union members would apportion some of their reserves for a contingency fund to be used if the euro came under ... (full story)