Keeping Greece in an unhappy club

IN the end, everything ran out: time, money, patience, luck, generosity - and the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis' early departure from the week's fourth Eurogroup meeting, hotfooting it back to the Athens cauldron, gave the other Europeans the cue to say that Greece had unilaterally broken off negotiations and was ejecting itself beyond the European Central Bank's emergency lending assistance. Recriminations all round.

The invective has been stronger than usual. It's rare to have both sides accusing each other of "blackmail". But, after all, this is a close-knit though unhappy family. They owe each other hundreds of billions of euros. It confirms a recurring pattern with currency upsets. Whether w…