A situation so clear for everyone to see but no-one's bothering to look. Until it happens here in about a year or so.

good article but it belies the point that the neo-liberal experiment has been a failure, look at china controlled economy, much higher growth rate, floating exchange rates force investment in hedging activities, not just financial corporations, but all trading corporations need to, hence investment directed away from the real economy to the casino economy....will someone tell the world the empereor has no clothes

Government control of banking and finance is by definition not neoliberal, so stop blaming capitalism for the failures of government.

Of course, another alternative is for the PIIGS to accept some measure of national responsibility for their citizens and raise retirement ages, reduce overly generous welfare payments and generally start living within their means. Just as the unrealistic rose-coloured view of the US financial and economic systems by Bill Clinton allowed him to remove financial constraints on borrowers which in turn gave us the sub-prime crisis and ultimately the GFC, so the current problems in the EU are the result of lax rules on national borrowing and spending.