A number of senior Tories favour an early referendum, believing that it would end the uncertainty that could have an impact on British businesses. However, eurosceptic MPs and Cabinet ministers want the Prime Minister to wait as long as possible before holding the vote, believing that an early referendum favours the “yes” campaign to remain in the EU. Whitehall sources have told The Daily Telegraph that Downing Street is increasingly looking whether the vote can be held in October 2016.

Martin Schulz, one of the most powerful men in Brussels, lashed out at Britain’s plans to strip migrants of benefits for four years, just hours after meeting the Prime Minister for breakfast. Benefit reform is the centrepiece of Mr Cameron’s plan for a new settlement with Europe. He hopes it will discourage immigration from poorer countries.

"There are attempts by people in Europe and also in this country to create new barriers between countries," Mr Schulz, a German socialist, said. "Stirring a feeling of panic over so-called benefit tourists from Romania and Bulgaria wanting to plunder the social systems of the host countries. Facts are twisted. Sweeping generalisations made. Outright lies told. Then those lies are repeated, again and again until people start to believe them.”

Mr Cameron had sought to embrace Mr Schulz after being advised that the European Parliament could attempt to derail any treaty change or new European legislation that Britain wants. Mr Schulz said Mr Cameron had “no chance” of exempting Britain from the EU principle of “ever closer union” and there was “not much chance” of securing treaty change, given the need for unanimous support around the continent.

In the end, it will go bust. In the end, it will shatter the fantasy of a unified European superstate, with one currency, one economic culture and one economic policy. You can’t, as some of us have been trying to tell the EU for the last 30 years, buck the markets. And the markets have made their decision about the wisdom of trying to link a basket-case economy such as Greece’s to that of Germany.

As the Greek banks are emptied of hard cash, as Greece’s creditors clench all that can be clenched in expectation of ruin, and as our economically illiterate masters in Brussels flail about in their desperate desire to prevent a public relations catastrophe (too late, by the way), where does this leave Britain?

Our Prime Minister was amidst the deaf in Europe last week, pretending to negotiate with people who refuse to listen to him. A typical response was that of the nonentity Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, who hectored him about the “hate”, “downright lies” and “national resentment” that he claimed informed the British debate about the EU. Herr Schulz grew up in West Germany, but seems fluent in the methods of the Stasi. I doubt his outburst has swayed many preparing to vote in the referendum, other than in a direction he would not want.

However, Greece will not be the last catastrophe, for the crisis it is triggering will destabilise much of the Continent, and cause tens of millions to question the European project. And, when that happens, we shall show we are more than just good at standing up to bullies, but also – however rigged the referendum – good at doing what is truly best for Britain.

For some time it has looked as though the Greek drama must reach its final denouement. But the Greeks have become highly skilled at managing to push back deadlines ever further into the future. Whether Greece leaves the euro or stays in, a decision surely cannot be delayed much longer. So what will this mean for the EU?

I had the privilege of negotiating Britain’s opt-out from the then new European single currency in 1991. My abiding memory is how clear it was that the euro had nothing to do with economics and was a political project with a dubious rationale. Some representatives of other countries were openly sceptical, but their political masters were firmly in control.

The creation of the euro has been an error of historic dimensions and done great harm to the EU, which in its first 40 years had brought economic prosperity to the citizens of the Continent. Then the less well-off countries benefited from the lowering of tariffs and the increase in internal trade. After the creation of the euro, however, economic growth slowed markedly. Poorer countries fared worse than the more prosperous countries, like Germany, which benefited from the new, weaker currency.

The Greek crisis epitomises the complete mess that Europe has made of the single currency. Greece should never have been admitted in the first place, though it was not the only country – Belgium and Italy were two others – that didn’t meet the strict criteria for membership.

Greece imports almost all of its medicines. After energy, drugs make up the second largest import spend, amounting to 5.5 percent of total goods. In the event that Greece is forced out of the monetary union, the cost of these supplies would soar under a dramatically undervalued drachma. This reliance on foreign drugmakers has led Germany’s top EU commissioner to warn Brussels to prepare for the “state of emergency” that could hit the country if it defaults on its debt on June 30.

Today, the situation isn't quite that fraught, but it seems feasible that a similar scene may soon play out in front of the Chancellery in Berlin. For some time now, the Americans have once again been thinking about upgrading Europe's nuclear arsenal, and in the past week, a rhetorical arms race has begun that is reminiscent of the coldest periods of the Cold War. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned of an "accelerating spiral of escalating words and then of actions." He described them as "the old reflexes of the Cold War."

Berlin is concerned that Europe could once again become the setting of a new East-West confrontation - and that Germany might once again become a deployment zone. A source in the Defense Ministry suggested that "more (military) equipment may once again be stockpiled in Germany." Washington plans to station tanks, weapons and heavy equipment for 5,000 soldiers in Germany and the eastern NATO countries. US President Barack Obama hopes that doing so will soothe the fears of the Baltic States and countries in Eastern Europe, which, since the Ukraine crisis, are once again fearful of Russian aggression. He also hopes to quiet his critics in US Congress.

For German Chancellor Angela Merkel, this prospect is not a pleasant one. She shies away from publicly criticizing her American allies, but Merkel is loathe to do anything that might heat up the conflict with Moscow. Furthermore, a new debate on rearmament would hardly be winnable on a domestic front. The chancellor would potentially look like a puppet of the United States, one who not only allows herself to be spied on, but who also stands by as her carefully established link to Putin is damaged.

Regardless, Texas aims to bring it home. “We want to show off our strength and resilience,” said Giovanni Capriglione, the Republican lawmaker who sponsored the repatriation bill. “This is to be able to say, ‘Hey, listen, Texas is unique, it’s stable, it’s strong…’” But Capriglione, who represents suburban Fort Worth, said it “isn’t some back-door way to create a Texas dollar or Texas currency.” He said getting the gold back to the Lone Star State was about security.

“Whenever you look at these economic collapses, it’s always based on consumer confidence,” he said. “It does make people feel more secure to have the gold here. It just does.”

Texas has a distrust of the federal government that befits a state that was once a country. Former Governor Rick Perry activated its National Guard last year to secure the Mexican border, saying Washington was doing a lousy job. Abbott directed state forces to monitor a US military training exercise called Operation Jade Helm 15 that will take place this summer in Texas and other states.

The fact of the matter is that the US economy is in tatters. The negative economic reports continue to pile up. The only people who have benefited from 6 years of ZIRP and $3.6 trillion in printed money are the ones closest to the spigot: Wall Street, Wall Street’s bought politicians and the wealthy individual and corporate plutocrats.

There’s no telling how much longer the Fed/Government can delay the coming reset, but when it occurs this country will be quickly reset to Third World economic status.

"Sometimes, it can even be morally necessary, when it's about shielding the weaker spouse or young children from the more serious wounds caused by intimidation and violence, humiliation and exploitation," he said. Francis said there were many families in "irregular situations" and the question should be how to best help them, and "how to accompany them so that the child does not become daddy or mummy's hostage".

The issue is likely to be addressed during the upcoming synod - a gathering of bishops - on the family, which Francis hopes will help reconcile Catholic thinking with the realities of believers' lives in the early 21st century.

Officials said Nevada’s Lake Mead, the 79-year-old reservoir created by the massive Hoover Dam, registered 1,074.98 feet (327.7 meters) above sea level late on Tuesday, but was able to rise above a critical mark by early on Wednesday morning. A water level of below 1,075 feet projected for January would translate to water cutbacks in 2016 for two US western states, Arizona and Nevada. An announcement would be made this August.

Lake Mead supplies water to roughly 40 million people and agricultural customers in Nevada, Arizona, Southern California and northern Mexico. The water source and several other man-made reservoirs springing from the Colorado River have dropped to as low as 45 percent of their capacity as the river suffers a 14th straight year of crippling drought.

September 13, 2015 is the last day of the current seven-year agricultural cycle in Israel known as Shemitah. As Rabbi Lazer Brody points out in a recent article, the US economy has suffered from a collapse or crash at the end of at least the past seven Shemitah cycles.

For example, at the end of the previous Shemitah cycle in 2008, the subprime mortgage crisis in the US caused major financial markets to lose nearly a third of their value. At the close of the Shemitah cycle before that, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 completely shut down Wall Street for a week. When the New York Stock Exchange reopened on September 17, 2001, the market fell 684 points in one day. At the end of the first week of trading following September 11, approximately $1.4 trillion in value was lost. “The fact that the American economy has nose-dived at the termination of the Shemitah year is more than an established pattern,” Brody asserts. Will we see it again this coming September?

The last day of the current Shemitah year falls on a Sunday, when the US stock market is closed. Nevertheless, based on previous Shemitah cycles, a stock market crash could happen in the weeks just before or after September 13.

More doomsday financial predictions are being seen in Greece, where the country has until June 30 to decide whether or not to exit the European Central Bank. If Greece pulls out, the whole country would uncouple itself economically from the rest of Europe, stop using euro currency and return to using the drachma. Whatever happens on June 30, the economic crisis in Greece, many believe, will likely lead to some sort of ripple effect throughout Europe.

The final blood moon of the current lunar tetrad (when four blood moons in a row occur six months apart) is set for September 28, 2015, very soon after the end of the Shemitah year on September 13. This date corresponds with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles. Unlike the previous three, the fourth blood moon is expected to be visible in Jerusalem.

Recent lunar tetrads have coincided with events of tremendous historical significance for Israel. Four blood moons followed the reestablishment of the State of Israel in 1948. In 1967, there was one blood moon before the Six Day War when the divided city of Jerusalem was reunited and three following. Said another way, during the blood moon tetrad of 1948, the Land of Israel was restored to the Jewish people. During the blood moon tetrad of 1967, the reunited city of Jerusalem was restored to the Jewish people. During the blood moon tetrad of 2015, will Israel regain dominion over the Temple Mount and be able to restore God’s presence there after 2,000 years?

Following a late-night emergency summit in Brussels on Monday, Athens laid out plans to carry out a series of economic reforms worth €8 billion over the next two years. They included a rise in VAT for restaurants, abolition of tax exemptions for Greek islands and plans to end early retirement in the country.

The Greeks were told the measures were a good basis for talks, which will continue with finance minsters in Brussels on Wednesday. But the measures are likely to prove a hard sell to Mr Tsipras's parliamentarians, as they cross a number of the "red lines" that have led to a five-month impasse in negotiations. Syriza MP Yannis Michelogiannakis called the proposals a "tombstone" around the country's neck.

"How can you cut a deal that will increase suicides and make people poorer?" he told Greek television. The anti-austerity government admitted its plight had forced it into a position to carry out “harsh” proposals. "There is full comprehension that there are measures in the proposal that are harsh, and they are measures that, under different circumstances, if it was up to us there was no way we would have taken," said government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis.

Any rescue deal will have to be ratified by the Greek parliament if an agreement is struck in the coming weeks. But with only a 12-seat majority in parliament, Mr Tsipras's five-month government faces a collapse should he fail to secure a majority.

Our correspondent says he appears to be alluding to fears that there are those elsewhere in the Eurozone who want to put the Greek Prime Minister in an impossible position, and engineer the collapse of his radical left-wing government. There are also reports that Greece has rejected an IMF counter-proposal calling for bigger VAT increases, and deeper pension and public spending cuts.

The remarks came as Mr Tsipras prepared for fresh talks to secure a debt deal. Greece must repay €1.6 billion (£1.1 billion) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by the end of the month, or face default and possible exit from the EU. Eurozone finance ministers are due to finalise a deal on Wednesday evening. On Wednesday, the ECB again increased additional emergency funding for Greek banks to stave off fears of a bank run - the fifth time in eight days it has done so as fearful savers withdraw up to €1 billion a day from domestic banks.

Tight schedule - the week ahead:

Wednesday: Eurozone's 19 finance ministers meet to go through details of latest proposals

Thursday-Friday: Scheduled meeting of all 28 EU member states - any agreement could receive leaders' backing here

Saturday-Tuesday: Agreement will need to be approved by Greek parliament and other eurozone governments - including vote in German Bundestag

Tuesday 30 June: Deadline for Greek repayment of €1.6 billion to IMF

Indeed, according to a comprehensive league table of hyperinflation compiled by Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at The John Hopkins University, Greece and Germany are among the worst such inflations of the modern age. If you think Greece is bad, with inflation peaking in October 1944 at 13,800 percent per month – yes, that’s per month – it’s got nothing on Germany, whose inflation rate reached an astonishing 29,500 percent per month in October 1923.

The Weimar inflation was arguably the fault of the Allies, and the reparations settlement forced on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, while the Greek hyperinflation was undoubtedly the work of the Germans, who forced the Greeks to pay the costs of the occupying army. Yet leaving aside the recriminations, the two episodes had the same underlying monetary and fiscal causes, common to virtually all hyperinflations; denied access to debt markets, and with the tax system in a state of collapse, governments tend to resort to the only available alternative to pay their bills – the central bank printing press. The government issues bonds, and the central bank buys them.

It’s the modern day equivalent of the currency debasement that took place under Henry VIII, widely nicknamed in his time “Old Coppernose”, on account of how the increasingly thin layer of silver on the coinage would wear off on this particular part of the king’s image. For everyone’s sake, this needs to end. The tragedy is that there is not much prospect of it any time soon. And even if Greece did leave the euro, the comedians that now front for a government would not have the stomach for the reforms necessary to support a currency board. It might indeed take another hyperinflation to bring this benighted nation to its senses.

As the standoff between the government of leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and its creditors in the European Union and International Monetary Fund has deepened, there have been growing warnings of an "accident" that could force Greece out of the euro.

This is what it may look like. If the pace of withdrawals continues, Greece may have to introduce capital controls, limiting the amount people can take out of their bank accounts and bringing into plain sight the prospect of an exit from the euro that would ravage savings. "It's very possible that this thing we hope to avoid will occur. Of course if it happens, the next step is chaos and catastrophe," said 55-year-old economist Ioannis Simaresis as he queued up to take money out of a cash machine.

For months, Greek banks have relied on emergency infusions of central bank funds to stay afloat, but with more than 4 billion euros taken out of the system this week, reserves are shrinking fast. If the withdrawals continue, a credit system that has been hollowed out during years of recession could reach the point of no return.