Why can't Greece be offered the option of an ordered exit from the euro? Why can't Greeks join in an orderly manner those EU member states that are not part of the monetary union? And why, most baffling of all, did the treaty that created the euro not contain an exit clause?

Officially, the rhetoric of the euro's champions remains unchanged: the common currency is forging a new Continent by fostering its "ever-closer union". As Greece's endless travails and the reaction to them demonstrate, that quest for amity exists more as notion than fact