But when he was asked to rank a disorderly Greek exit on a “scale of one to 10, where the collapse of Lehman is a 10,” Furman opined that “a Greek default would likely register as a six; that is down from eight in 2012.”41 When the stakes had been high, Washington had not hesitated to meddle in the politics of the euro area. For a crisis that registered only 6 out of 10, Washington was not about to jeopardize its relationship with Berlin. As one American official told Varoufakis: “For us you belong to the sphere of influence of Berlin, which we will not question.”42
