The I.M.F. Is Telling Europe the Euro Doesn’t Work

It reads like a dry, 1,184-word memorandum about fiscal projections. But the International Monetary Fund’s memo on Greek debt sustainability, explaining why the I.M.F. cannot participate in a new bailout program unless other European countries agree to huge debt relief for Greece, has provided the “Emperor Has No Clothes” moment of the Greek crisis, one that may finally force eurozone members to either move closer to fiscal union or break up.

The I.M.F. memo amounts to an admission that the eurozone cannot work in its current form. It lays out three options for achieving Greek debt sustainability, all of which are tantamount to a fiscal union, an arrangement through which wealthier countries would make payments to support the Greek economy. Not coincidentally, this is the solution many economists have been telling European officials is the only way to save the euro — and which northern European countries have been resisting because it is so costly.

The Humanitarian’s Dilemma

Stepping out of a car in the West Bank town of Kafr Qaddum, I was greeted by the stench of urine, feces, and burned tires — a foul reminder of the near-constant confrontation between Israeli settlers and soldiers on one side, and Palestinians on the other.

The Abu Ehab family — whose two-story house is on a slope just below the road we drove in on — is caught between these battles. The family members keep their chickens on the second floor and live on the first, but the walls do little to protect them from the exchange of tear gas, burning tires, and hurled rocks. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops frequently move around the Abu Ehab family’s property during nighttime search operations; at times, they enter the house.

In Mexico, Crime Is Bigger Than a Crime Boss

The alleged end of the tunnel through which Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera could have escaped from the Altiplano prison, at a house in Almoloya de Juarez, Mexico, on July 12. (YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

The July 11 escape of the notorious Sinaloa crime boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, from a maximum-security prison in Mexico has drawn considerable Mexican and international media attention. While the brazen and elaborate nature of the escape will add to the lore already surrounding Guzman, the escape itself carries little significance for organized crime in Mexico — though it will place a momentary strain on coordination between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement. The forces that drive the evolution of organized crime and their impact on society in Mexico are simply greater than any single crime boss.

The Greek bailout deal resolves nothing

Even if the new bailout makes it through the Greek parliament in coming weeks, the programme's economic incoherence will make it fall apart.

Before the bailout deal was struck, the Greek impasse had descended into point-scoring and finger-pointing, with creditors blaming Greece for the country’s economic woes, and Greeks – and the centre-left in other countries – blaming the creditors for insisting on more austerity and trying to humiliate the country. Now that a deal has been struck, the argument will shift onto whether Alexis Tsipras, with his confrontational bargaining strategy, has won anything that a more emollient government would not. Tspiras and his supporters claim that debt relief and a long-term programme of fresh lending would not have been on the table without playing hardball. But the truth is that Greece capitulated on Monday July 13th, not the creditors, and this has important ramifications for the bailout’s success. 

Nine People Who Saw the Greek Crisis Coming Years Before Everyone Else Did

Although the problems in Greece didn't begin making big headlines until 2009, a number of economists, politicians and professors spotted cracks in the European currency union as early as the 1990s. Meanwhile, it's interesting to note that the country had a tough time making it into the single currency in the first place. Greece failed to qualify for the euro in 1998 before being granted admission in 2001. 

The iron lady vs iron EU.

Photographer: Jeff Overs/BBC News & Current Affairs via Getty Images

Here are some people who must have had crystal balls. 

Destruction—and I’m Leaving The Party

Dear Sigmar Gabriel,

I’ve been a member of the SPD since the age of 13. As you’ll know, that is not supposed to happen: You have to be 14 to sign up. But I was so impatient for Helmut Kohl’s conservative government to come to an end, and admired the history of social democracy so much, that I begged the comrades in Munich until they said: “You could always make a little mistake and write that you were born in 1981 rather than in 1982.”

Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) (Reuters/Thomas Peter)

Since then I’ve often had my disagreements with the SPD. But I never regretted being a member. Until now.