There has also been a significant shift in attitude towards the mutualisation of the Rock at HM Treasury.
Germany's price for any mutualisation of liabilities is greater economic and political integration.
Debt mutualisation can be devised to stop short of a permanent transfer union.
The mutualisation of risk may have to encompass a euro-zone bank-resolution fund as well as a joint deposit-insurance scheme.
One reason why so many Germans oppose debt mutualisation is because they (wrongly) imagine the euro could survive without it.
We have long argued that the single currency needs a lender of last resort, a banking union and limited debt mutualisation.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, says that if there is to be any mutualisation of liabilities, there must be greater central control.
Systemic reforms will be needed, including some mutualisation of debts and a move towards a banking union, with euro-wide oversight and responsibility for banks.
And it will become a listed, for-profit company without following the lengthy route, via de-mutualisation and a public offering, that has taken other exchanges years.
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But he warns that this is "a Rubicon the Germans don't wish to cross" as it is "a side door into eurobonds and mutualisation of debts".
Greece's debts so outweigh its economy that it would need a further rescue before entering any mutualisation scheme though the sum involved is small on a continental scale.
And the ECB may have brought Europe one step closer to debt mutualisation, prompting a narrowing of the spread between the borrowing costs of Germany and the periphery.
And since the mutualised debt would have to become a national responsibility again after 25 years, it might actually make the long-term mutualisation of eurozone debt harder to achieve.
This is still a long way from the partial debt mutualisation that the euro zone needs, but it marks a step forward from Germany's exclusive obsession with fiscal austerity.
Germany, which is holding a crucial parliamentary election in September -- which Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) are expected to win -- is resisting any form of debt mutualisation.
But his refusal to countenance structural reform of any sort would surely make it harder for him to persuade Mrs Merkel to tolerate more inflation or consider some form of debt mutualisation.
It's the same as it ever was: mutualisation of all the eurozone's debts, which in practice means that the mighty German sovereign balance sheet would stand behind the enormous liabilities of the rest of the eurozone.
But what will disappoint many MPs and campaigners for mutualisation is that there haven't been any bids from building societies to buy the Rock - with Coventry and Yorkshire building societies both deciding not to submit formal bids by last week's deadline.
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And when we talk about "mutualisation" of eurozone sovereign debt, that's a euphemism for Germany underwriting all eurozone nations' debt - and it seems unlikely that, when put that way, the German people will find that more appealing than a plate of cold sick.
Such a move would of course come as a tremendous shock, and it would be essential to protect Italy and France at once by making far-reaching concessions that shift the remaining euro area towards mutualisation of debt and the creation of a banking union.
The biggest risk associated with this scenario is that the moves towards debt mutualisation and a banking union might not, after all, be enough to stabilise the remaining euro area, resulting in a total break-up of the euro zone and triggering a savage recession with hugely damaging economic consequences.
The necessary steps would also involve full "mutualisation" of eurozone sovereign debt, the pooling of sovereign liabilities, which would permit the European Central Bank to be the lender of last resort to the currency union - and give the eurozone the kind of protection against the risk of default that the UK and the US have.
In other words the solution is the same as it ever was, and may be as politically impossible as ever it was: the Germany government would need to provide official underwriting for the funds borrowed by the Italian, Spanish and other eurozone governments, what is known as mutualisation of borrowing, to reduce their borrowing costs and provide assurance of credit supply.
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