The first round of the battle for the euro is over, and Germany has won. The whole European Union won, really, but the Germans set the strategy.
Technically everybody just kicked the can down the road four months by extending the existing bailout arrangements for Greece, but what was really revealed in the past week is that the Greeks can't win. Not now, not later.
The left-wing Syriza Party stormed to power in Greece last month promising to ditch the austerity that has plunge a third of the population below the poverty line and to renegotiate the country's massive $270 billion bail-out with the EU and the International Monetary Fund. Exhausted Greek voters just wanted an end to six years of pain and privation, and Syriza offered them hope. But it has been in retreat ever since.