More Tea, Wolfgang?

The "Tea Party" may be getting it in the neck for its bumbling brand of brinkmanship over the US debt ceiling, but, as Schumpeter points out, it's the European finance leaders who seem not to realise the gravity of the current financial situation:

"Italy sold €8 billion ($11.4 billion) of ten-year bonds on July 28th but had to pay a yield of 5.77% to do so, the highest level at auction for 11 years. Making matters worse, European politicans have gone back to making unsettling comments after their brief show of discipline at the summit: Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, said this week that he would not be writing any blank cheques to the euro area’s bail-out fund, the size of which is inadequate to ringfence Spain and Italy."