The scale of the unfolding disaster is far greater than the pile of debt accumulated by negligent Greece, and European Union leaders are rightly embarrassed by the metamorphosis of their "model" union into the epicenter of economic disaster - and by their inability to handle the problem.
Lacking serious things to say, Medvedev presented a rather dubious proposal for protecting intellectual property in the Internet, but what was even odder was his attempt to position Russia together with "super-emerging" powers like China and apart from the depressed Western economies. Russia's denial of and chronic unpreparedness for a new spasm of the crisis is also a function of the character of its stagnant leadership. Medvedev certainly cuts a very unconvincing figure at a gathering of real leaders and would hardly make a resourceful prime minister. A more serious consequence of his failed presidency, however, could be that the proposition of "modernization" has become discredited.
