It's Up to Germany Now

After a week in which European stock markets lost more than 5% on average, and the Americans didn't do any better, the questions are flying fast and thick about what's happening and how to cure the illness. Analysts want to find "a bottom" to the market so it will start to rise again. They want to see better employment numbers in America so markets
will rise again (wouldn't we all like to see that!). They want Asia to bail out the Euro. They want, in a word, Santa Claus in August.
My dear readers, it is not going to happen.
One thing is sure. America will get hold of its debt problem. It'll find a way to power over political differences and get the job done. It always has. The worst of all bad news would be if America fails to come through this time. It will take more muscle than President Obama seems to have, but there are others, the old pols, who will push him forward to where he should have been all along - leading. Or they will simply walk over him.
The real question, the moment of truth, does not lie with America. It lies squarely on the doorstep of Germany. It is now or never for Europe and the concept of a common currency, and only Germany has the financial muscle to save either one.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has, despite teh bad press she usually receives, paid a lot of German tax money to keep the Eurozone and the European concept alive. She has done it despite a  staggering 75% of her citizens wishing that she would stop and save some of Germany's money for use at home (does that sound familiar, my dear American readers?).
Merkel will need to be heroic to save either the Euro or the European Union concept as it is now structured.
Perhaps she will succeed. Perhaps she will overcome the huge political problem she has at home and force Germans to follow her into the morass of paying for all of Europe for all time - because that's what she will need to agree to do. France cannot do it, nor can any other  European country.
So, forget about unemployment figures and bottoming out. Forget about Greece's bankruptcy. Forget about the recent market crash of French banks (the most conservative in Europe, by the way).
Follow Angela Merkel and the German electorate. That is where Europe's future lies, and the decision will have to be made before the end of 2011 in order to save Europe before it is shredded into such tatters that even Angela's fine hand will not be able to stitch it back together.