Sarkozy and Others Panic Over Bust-Up of Eurozone

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned that Europe must bail out Greece, or face the breakup of the European Monetary Union single-currency system. "If we created the euro, we cannot let a country fall that is in the eurozone," Sarkozy said in a Saturday interview, preceding his meeting today with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. "Otherwise there is no point in creating the euro." Sarkozy's flip-out over the danger of a bust-up of the EMU, reported today by Bloomberg News, comes on the eve of local elections in France, where Sarkozy's party is expected to take big losses, reflecting growing anger over the collapsing French economy. Papandreou arrives in Paris from meetings in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel stuck to her refusal to bailout Greece, and has called, instead, for the creation of a European Monetary Fund, modeled on the IMF, to deal with future EMU debt crises. German opposition to a bailout of Greece and the other "PIGS" nations (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) is strong. Papandreou is coming to Washington from Paris, and he has said that if no European bailout is worked out, he will go to the IMF, a move that ECB head Jean-Claude Trichet opposes, out of fear that it will totally discredit the EMU/ECB and lead to the ultimate bust-up of the eurozone.