The endless euro soap opera has run helter-skelter through new twists and turns: Spain accepted a Euro100 billion (HK$972.11 billion) bailout package to fix its rotten banking system, although Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy pretended it was only a line of credit; Cyprus suggested it might want money; Spanish and Italian bond rates rose again; and several European leaders declared that only European integration would fix the problems.
Don't worry: the soap opera will run and run, with nail-biting twists and turns over whether Greece will jump or be pushed out of the euro zone, whether Spain has done enough, when Italy's vulnerability will be recognised, who will blink first - France or Germany?
The show will fascinate and drag down the rest of the world until Europe rediscovers growth, and there is no clue yet that anyone has a clue about how to accomplish this.
Renewed calls for European integration are interesting, but it is unclear whether it is a genuine religious conversion or whether leaders are mouthing platitudes, realising they have messed up their economy and that of the world.
'The euro has won,' Rajoy declared after Spain's deal. A European 'political union' was needed, Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, said. Jose Manuel Barroso, the (unelected) president of the European Commission, predicted a banking union, including a supervisory body with powers over all European Union banks, would be created within a year. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, called for 'more Europe, not less', adding that a single European financial market needed to have a more integrated framework.
There is a lot of St Augustine - 'Lord, make me chaste, but not yet' - in the European aspirations of leaders: no one envisages European union in their political lifetime. Merkel backed away from any immediate union, calling for a 'step by step' approach of ceding national powers to Europe, and saying: 'I don't think there is a single summit at which the big design will appear.'