Then even Schäuble himself, by far the staunchest opponent of debt relief, admitted that Greece needed it; but he also claimed that such relief would violate European Union treaty provisions barring bailouts of governments. Following Schauble’s remarkable acknowledgment (made publicly only after utter catastrophe had struck), Merkel herself opined that perhaps certain kinds of relief (such as cuts in interest rates, rather than in the debt’s face value) could do the job in a way that would be consistent with EU rules.