My friend Eamonn O’Connor, who is busy setting up City Noble, had time to share this little nugget. Far too subtle for this blog and a pearl before the Plowman’s swine Eamonn!

Plenty of posturing in Euroland at present:  the creditor nations resolute there can be no relaxation of Greece’s debt burden, the Greeks themselves, weighed down by years of austerity now reinvigorated by a decisive election outcome, seemingly up for the fight.

An apparently weak negotiation hand for the Greeks – highly indebted, in need of new funding, debt payments looming. The ECB on the other hand has merely to pull the plug and Greece is in default, Euro exit an inevitability.

The markets appear none too perturbed, bad news for the Greeks but plenty of QE on the horizon to ward off contagion amongst other peripheral states.

Well, perhaps Grexit won’t threaten the European project. Perhaps it’ll even serve pour encourager les autres, especially if the outcome is as nightmarish for the people of Greece as some envisage.

But what if it were to work? What if Grexit and all it entails – devaluation, currency controls, sub zero credit rating – actually sees the Greeks up on their feet in five or six years? Such an outcome is surely a bigger threat to the cohesion of the Eurozone. What then for fiscal discipline and austerity?

Greece’s hand may not be strong, but it’s still more ‘two pairs’ than a ‘pair of twos’.

For all the posturing and positioning, compromise will soon be in the air.

I have many Greek friends and no Greek enemies, for all the folly of their economic policy it is hard not to wish the Greeks well.

But then I’m not picking up the bill!