Indeed, this year, two countries, Greece and Ireland, were bailed out by the rest of the EU, even though Article 125 of the consolidated EU treaty stipulates that no member state is to stand in for the debt of another, a guarantee that Germany required as a pre-condition for giving up its beloved Deutschmark. That doctrine of hard discipline was abolished in a coup in May 2010, when it was claimed that the world would collapse unless Germany opened its purse.