Sarkozy retreated, saving face by dismissing the idea as an unauthorized personal initiative on Lagarde’s part. But the French and the Dutch were right. Within twelve months, precisely the scenario that Lagarde had sketched for Handelsblatt would come to haunt the eurozone. Crippled banks and ailing government borrowers would pull one another down. But prescient though the French might have been, nothing could be done without Berlin. On October 4 Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown and Berlusconi convened in Paris. The result was disappointing. Gordon Brown came away impressed by the sense that the
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