Only Mario Draghi's ECB can avert global calamity before the year is out

The interbank system and "monetary transmission channel" are both shattered. It called for a blast of money printing - "pre-announced", across the board, and on a "sizeable" scale - to head off a "debt-deflation spiral" in Club Med.
Its prognosis for Spain becomes grimmer with each report. Recession will grind on until 2014, the Spanish now learn, with unemployment already at 24.6pc, or 53pc for youth. The jobless rate is 34pc in Andalucia. Twisting the knife, unemployment support is about to be slashed.
Nobody knows where the point of political revulsion lies but monetary and fiscal suffocation has already brought Barcelona and Madrid to the point of blows, since the Catalans have been forced by the perversities of Spain’s tax system to request a "rescue" even though they subsidize the rest of the country.
Catalan president Artur Mas warned over the weekend that the "whole nation of Catalonia" will rise up if Madrid tries to exploit events to roll back regional powers. We are moving into very dangerous waters.
Jacques Cailloux from Nomura said Mr Draghi could in theory announce that the ECB will cap Italian and Spanish bond yields 3pc and vow to defend the level "at any cost", just as the Swiss National Bank has vowed unlimited intervention to hold the franc steady against the tsunami of money fleeing Euroland. But that would be "tantamount to a eurobond in disguise" and run straight into a German picket. There lies the rub.