Jones: Europe stuck between a rock and a hard place?

Pick a term, any term. ‘Reprofiling', ‘restructuring' or a plain old ‘default' - there is only so far you can disguise the inevitable.

Also, what the spin doctors try and make more palatable, the numbers certainly do not. Greece’s budget deficit now stands at 10.5% of GDP, and the debt to GDP ratio for next year looks set to be above 150%. At the time of writing, senior officials from Europe and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are ready to pore over Greece’s finances in Athens, in a bid to tidy up the mess, but the question is whether policymakers will allow the country to default on its sovereign debt. ‘Reprofiling’, as it is now called, would allow Greece to extend its repayment period over the next 12 months...