Watching this long drawn-out crisis, which has had somany crunch points and so much fallout for other countries, many would surely disagree with Mr Trichet's notion - that the eurozone was a basically strong economy, with a few local difficulties to sort out.
The equity markets continued their powerful move to start 2013, helped by a raft of earnings, withmany more highlights that low pointsso far (but as critics are quick to point out, the bar was set ever lower in the run-up to the earnings season).