http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9091837/Can-a-return-to-the-drachma-save-Greece-as-unemployment-soars.html
A variant of this lies in store for Portugal as its "internal devaluation" starts in earnest. The young Schumpeterians in charge of the economy insist otherwise, cocksure that shock therapy will triumph without debt relief and devaluation.
But events have a habit of demolishing dreams.
In November alone, 126,000 Greeks lost their jobs in a country of 11m, equivalent to 680,000 Britons in a single month. The unemployment rate jumped from 18.2pc to 20.9pc.
This has not yet fed through into social breakdown. Professor Manos Matsaganis from Athens University said Greeks receive unemployment support for an average of thirty weeks, with a ceiling of €454 (£377) a month. Those with civil service tenure are placed on labour reserve for two years at less than half their previous pay.
Once these cushions are exhausted, Greeks are on their own. The monthly ratchet effect will then become painfully evident. It is why the Orthodox Primate Hieronymus II warned that ever further doses of the same "deadly medicine" are becoming dangerous."The voices of the desperate are being provocatively ignored. Fear is giving way to rage and the risk of a social explosion can no longer be ignored by those who give orders and those who execute their lethal recipes," he said.
Dimitra Noussi, who runs homeless shelters for the City of Athens, said the crunch comes once people have been unemployed for five or six months and cannot pay the rent.
"I fear we'll see an unbelievable increase in numbers. We're suddenly starting to see people in their fifties coming in, and even families with children. They feel humiliated and desperate. I never thought I would see such a thing in my country."
It is against this backdrop that the EU-ECB-IMF troika is imposing a further 150,000 public-sector job cuts over three years, without any offsetting Marshall Plan to rescue private industry. The Greek state is €7bn in arrears to companies; manufacturing contracted by 15.5pc in December; and a further 50,000 small firms are expected to go bankrupt by July.
Private companies cannot pick up the slack, even if premier Lucas Papademos reaches a debt deal with Germany's Wolfgang Schauble and staves off default in March.
One can see why the priests of the EU project wish to prevent elections taking place in April. The political centre is disintegrating, with PASOK down to 8pc in the polls and support splintering to the hard Left and hard Right.
The Indignados in Syntagma Square replay with mocking cruelty the immortal speech of PASOK leader George Papandreou, gushing: "There is enough money for everything."
The latest best-seller is the Greek translation of Heinrich Winkler'sWeimar 1918-1933, narrating how an indebted Germany pursued the same deflation policies under the Gold Standard as Greece is now pursuing under EMU, with the same results.
The book culminates in the Reichstag elections of July 1932 when the Nazis and Communists between them won half the seats.
Such parallels are always inexact. The radical parties of Syriza and the Democratic Left are not authoritarian. Yet their ascendancy must shatter the existing order. "If we achieve a Left-dominated government, we will politely tell the troika to leave the country, and we may need to discuss an orderly return to the drachma," said Syriza MP Theodoros Dritsas.
Mr Papademos warns that default and an EMU exit would lead to "uncontrollable economic chaos". But is that not already the case? No Greek bank has been able to issue a letter of credit accepted anywhere in the world since November. Large firms are switching headquarters to Bulgaria to conduct basic trade.
The "drachma risk" has already killed investment. Greece is suffering the consequences of an EMU exit without the benefits, so it might as well lance the boil, impose capital controls, and create a new banking system (as Iceland did). Such catharsis would start to unlock €60bn of cash savings sitting under the proverbial mattress. Foreign investors would nibble again, once the Greek exchange rate reflected reality.
Angelos Tsakanakis from the think tank IOVE is exasperated by such defeatist thinking, fearing serial defaults and legal mayhem. "If your kitchen is on fire and you jump out of a third-floor window, you may be lucky. Isn't it more sensible to try to extinguish the fire?" he said.
Mr Tsakanakis said Greece has clawed back 15pc in labour cost competitiveness since the crisis began, closing part of the EMU gap. The EU task force – not to be confused with the troika – is half way through a quiet revolution that should soon start to bring Greece down from 101 on the World Bank's ease of doing business index (behind Yemen) to nearer OECD levels. Let the process run its course, and hope for the best.
Ultimately, the choice is not an economic calculus. For a country on the outer fringes of Europe, cheek by jowl with the Ottoman nemesis, the euro anchor has existential significance, just as it does for Estonia on the borders of Putin's Russia.
"If we are forced out of the euro, it would be a decisive blow to our anchoring in the European project. Greece may never again be part of Europe in my lifetime or that of my children," said Prof Matsaganis. Judging by the mood in the EU's AAA-core, the decision will be made for them.
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