Last year’s bailout of Greece cost 110 billion euros. It failed. This year’s will cost another 120 billion euros. One definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different result. Default is not if but when, and the Greek people have to choose to get out of the euro.

The government doubles our payments to the International Monetary Fund, not to save Portugal, Greece and Ireland but to save the euro, to save the EU. Excessive loans at low interest rates in a currency you do not control lead inevitably to defaults. Don’t pay the debts; don’t enrich the bankers.

Argentina’s default in 2001 was the biggest in history. “So successful did its default prove (economic growth has since surged …) that many economists were left to ponder why any sovereign debtor ever honours its commitments to foreign bondholders.” Who says? Would you believe, Thatcherite Niall Ferguson, of all people. Default is good for us.

Again, the City of London’s tame journal City A.M. says, “the Icelandics couldn’t afford to bail out their bondholders – so they put their taxpayers first, only guaranteed the deposits of their own citizens and allowed everything else to go bust in 2008. It was painful – especially for foreign customers of their banks, including in the UK – … but in the end it has worked for Iceland. Sometimes it makes sense to give up and move on.” Of course, at the time, City A.M. screamed that it was the end of civilisation as we know it.