As the euro crisis intensifies to the point of investors openly contemplating a fracturing of the single currency, perhaps the most puzzling performance all year has been the stability of the euro exchange rate itself. Government bond and bank equity prices have plummeted. Euro financial funding systems are creaking, European business confidence has evaporated and regional economies are heading for their second major recession in three years. The bloc's failure so far to devise a credible firebreak to almost two years of rolling creditor strikes in its government debt markets -- from tiny Greece, Ireland and Portugal ... (full story)