EU Fiscal Union Is Highly Unlikely, con

Edward Hugh reports that the Germans are laying down the gauntlet on the Greeks:

Only yesterday, German Finance Minsister Wolfgang Schaeuble informed members of the parliamentary budget committee that Greece is now perched on a "knife's edge". This follows hints from other leading German politicians (including Angela Merkel herself) that a Greek euro exit is no longer the unthinkable taboo topic which it had been to date.  

As if all of this wasn't clear enough, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte suggested yesterday in an FT article that expulsion from the Euro Area should be available as a disciplinary measure of last resort.

For detail on why things are coming to head now, see the link. The gist is that the "voluntary haircut" component of the most recent Greek bailout isn't working the way it was intended, and neither Greece nor Germany (and other Euro creditors) are especially interested in yielding to the other at this juncture. They may continue to muddle through as they have previously, but hopes that the recent bailout-plus-haircut approach is going to be sufficient have been weakened.