The greatest danger to the euro is not that Greece leaves, but that its rejection of economic rationality encourages other, larger states to follow suit. If Greece is able to have its cake (a sound currency) and eat it (by refusing to reform its welfare state and by relying on handouts), radicals in Spain or Italy will eventually demand the same for themselves. Greece is containable; the Club Med giants wouldn’t be.

Forcing Greece out of the euro would be a gamble, of course, and the markets may panic, but there is a good chance that contagion could be prevented. Allowing Greece to thumb its nose at those who try to live within their means would be far more risky. In this case, if it had any sense, the EU would agree to a tactical retreat and allow Greece to walk away from its debts and from the euro.

This would also be good for the Greeks themselves, even though they would suffer in the short term. The latest proposals on VAT, pensions and the rest don’t change the fundamental problem. Greece must devalue its currency: that is the only way that its economy can possibly bounce back. A weaker currency – a new, freely floating drachma – would boost exports and attract far more tourists.

Europe’s leaders need to accept that Greece cannot thrive unless its debts are written off, and that this wouldn’t be acceptable to other countries unless it also exited the euro. For everybody’s sake, it is time to set Greece free.

The centre-Right mayor’s latest broadside against Britain came as aid agencies in Calais are warning that the migrant crisis has reached record levels, with the population having swollen from around 1,000 in April to 3,000 this month and hundreds more expected in the coming weeks. Aid workers warned that some of the sprawling makeshift campsites, known locally as the Jungle, have become so large as to be untenable.

Speaking to France Info radio, Ms Bouchart said: “I am calling for a diplomatic incident with the British government. We are forced to endure situations that are inexplicable.” “Great Britain must either enter Europe with all the conditions of Schengen, or leave Europe, but there comes a time when we can no longer be held hostage.” She insisted that the UK would help matters if it introduced “drastic” new rules making it harder for migrants to live and work in Britain, thus lowering its attractiveness. She has previously accused the UK of turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants working in the black economy.

We ask these questions to the Vice-President of Germany’s Left Party and Member of the Bundestag. Sahra Wagenknecht is on Sophie&Co today.

Sophie Shevardnadze: The President of the European Council Donald Tusk has said that toughening of sanctions against Russia is unlikely, he’s also admitted that there’s a group of EU members that wants an end to these sanctions. Is there a chance that there will be a change of EU policies in this regard?

Sahra Wagenknecht: I really hope so, because it’s obvious that these sanctions have no positive results. They have a harmful influence on the Russian economy. They have a harmful influence on the European economy. In Germany a number of enterprises are suffering from a drop of their sales levels. This policy is absolutely meaningless, and that’s why we call for an end to these sanctions. I don’t know if the EU will move in this direction, everything depends on the pressure it’s under. But we won’t be able to reach an understanding with these tools; we won’t be able to move forward, to build better relations. On the contrary, our relations will only become worse.

SS: You believe that new sanctions against Russia would be fatal for the EU. Why can’t Europe give up this policy? An economic war against Russia also means a slowdown for German economy, for all sides of the conflict.

SW: If Europe followed an independent policy, if European politicians put Europe’s interests first, they would immediately call for the lifting of sanctions. The problem is that somebody is in favor of these sanctions, the United States want them to stay in place. It’s well known that American energy corporations would like to push Russian gas out of Europe and fill the vacant spots in the energy market with their own shale gas. The United States are actually harming the European economy. There aren’t a lot of American corporations on the European markets, so sanctions are causing damage to Europe itself.

SS: You believe the US is deliberately pulling Europe into a confrontation with Russia. Why isn’t dialogue possible? If I understand correctly, you think US is dictating its policies to the EU, why are EU states eager to comply, why not go against the US?

SW: Of course the politicians, those behind EU strategies are under US pressure. It is clear that the goal of American foreign policy is to aggravate tensions between Germany and Russia, to aggravate tensions between Europe and Russia. And NATO is a tool the US uses to spread its interests, to extend its sphere of influence. Why do Europeans participate in all this? That’s something to think about.

“These attacks may presage a new era in which centralized leadership of a terrorist organization matters less, group identity is more fluid and violent extremist narratives focus on a wider range of alleged grievances and enemies with which lone actors may identify and seek to carry out self-directed attacks,” reads the report.

Case in point: The shootings in Garland, Texas, and their aftermath. In the past five weeks, nine young men in Garland, Boston, and most recently New York and New Jersey, have either been arrested for allegedly attempting to carry out ISIS-inspired attacks, or killed by law enforcement in a confrontation.

The attack in Garland, where two men opened fire outside a “Draw Muhammad” contest, was the first ISIS-inspired attack launched on US soil. The shooters, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, only managed to superficially injure a security guard, before they were killed. The reactions on social media to the Garland attack and to the arrests of individuals in other cities offers a microcosm into how ISIS’s social media campaign is operating on a grassroots level, and how law enforcement is trying to nip the epidemic in the bud.

“They’re very good at communicating through separate avenues where it’s very difficult to track,” Nunes said. “That’s why when you get a young person who is willing to get into these chat rooms, go on the Internet and get radicalized, it’s something we are not only unprepared [for], we are also not used to it in this country.”

Several Americans across the US have been arrested and charged recently with being ISIS sympathizers and trying to join the terror group. Nunes stated “we are having a tough time tracking terrorist cells within the United States.”

“It’s just tough to secure those types of areas if you have someone who wants to blow themselves up or open fire or other threats of that nature and we just don’t know or can track all of the bad guys that are out there today,” he explained to “Face the Nation.”

The bill, if approved into law, could complicate the ongoing talks in Vienna between Iran and the six-nation group — the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — as they face a self-imposed June 30 deadline. The talks are focused on reaching a final accord that curbs Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. Of 213 lawmakers present on Sunday, 199 voted in favor of the bill, which also demands the complete lifting of all sanctions against Iran as part of any final nuclear accord. The bill must be ratified by the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog, to become a law.

The terms stipulated in the bill allow for international inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, but forbid any inspections of military facilities. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani read the bill aloud in a session broadcast live on state radio. It states in part, “The International Atomic Energy Agency, within the framework of the safeguard agreement, is allowed to carry out conventional inspections of nuclear sites.”

However it concludes that “access to military, security and sensitive non-nuclear sites, as well as documents and scientists, is forbidden.”

The criminals call their victim pretending to be from their bank and persuade the account-holder to transfer money directly into the hands of the thieves. Innocent people are talked into making the bank transfers by highly-convincing scammers who often claim a fraud has been detected on a victim's bank account and they have to act fast by moving their money into a so-called "safe account".

The crime sounds too unsophisticated to be successful, but figures compiled for the first time by a national anti-fraud agency showed a staggering £23.6 million was stolen last year by simply persuading victims to hand over their money in this way. Police believe the scam is becoming more common.

In some cases the criminals will tell their victim to hang up the telephone and call another number but will stay on the line, leaving the connection unbroken so they can “answer” the victim’s call. The scammers may also use technological expertise to change the outgoing number of their telephone line so the victim’s handset or caller display appears to show their bank’s genuine telephone number.

Financial Fraud Action (FFA UK) launched an awareness-raising campaign warning about the growing use of direct bank transfer frauds. Criminals increasingly try to minimise the risk of arrest by never coming into direct contact with their victim, the FFA UK said. Banks or police will never ask someone to withdraw money to hand over to them for safe-keeping or ask them to transfer money to a new account for safe-keeping, even if they claim it will be held in that person's name. Banks or the police will never send someone to a person's home to collect their cash, “Pin” number, payment card or cheque book if they are a victim of fraud.

Lieutenant John Walker told reporters that an 18-month-old girl was hit in the neck, an 11-year-old boy was shot in the leg and back and a 12-year-old-boy was struck in the chest. There were also apparently two blasts from a shotgun. It is remarkable that no one was killed. Police believe that the gunfire was a result of ongoing feuding between two groups of people.

The two shootings constituted black on black violence, and as such do not neatly fit the constant barrage of race baiting division currently being pumped out by the mainstream media. This is why you probably didn’t hear about the incidents until now.

Whether Greece exits the eurozone or not (and it is an increasingly absurd charade), there remain a number of uncomfortable truths that the rest of the countries of Europe, whether in the eurozone, the EU or neither will have to confront. The first is that Greece is a failing state, something that will have implications far beyond the merely financial. Long before the financial crisis hit the global economy in 2008-09, Greece was in trouble.

The combination of structural economic weakness and high structural deficits were compounded by a culture where tax evasion and corruption are both widespread and, to a large extent, acceptable. In the six years from 2004, Greek output increased in nominal terms by 40 per cent, while government spending rose by 87 per cent and tax revenues rose by a mere 31 per cent. The European authorities charged with overseeing the single currency should have acted then. Their failure to do so has been partly to blame for today’s crisis.

It does not matter how much money is now thrown at Greece, Thessalonica will not be Düsseldorf any time soon. The cultural gap between the hard-working and profit focused north of Europe could not be more different from this southerly neighbour where masseurs can retire early on a state pension because it is regarded as hard and damaging physical labour.

A Grexit will be no panacea, and might even create its own array of difficulties. Even if Greece leaves the single currency, it will still have phenomenal financial problems, at least in the short and medium term, which need to be addressed and the danger is that it will suck in both Chinese and Russian money, becoming a strategic liability for the rest of Europe and the Nato alliance more widely. Russia is, for example, keen to have allies who will block the renewal of EU sanctions over Ukraine.

The uncomfortable truth to be faced is that the euro is a fundamentally flawed project. This, of course, comes as no surprise to those of us who have been predicting from its very inception that it spells trouble. The haste in which it was created and the fact that it was always more a political project than an economic one, has built chronic instability into its architecture. We have now reached the point where the euro does not have a problem – the euro is the problem.

The attempt to create a Europe at one with itself, living prosperously and happily under a new kind of unelected government, has led it to become such a sad, unhappy, divided place, economically in decline compared with the outside world, ruled by a strange form of government it no longer trusts, respects or understands.

Similarly, the last desperate throw by the EU and the US to achieve a world agreement next December to “halt climate change” is not going to succeed, not just because the “science” on which it is based is so increasingly questionable, but because the emerging powers of the East, led by India and China, are simply not prepared to go along with it. If the West wishes to commit economic suicide, so be it. In their own national interest, they are not willing to follow.

In fact, what we are seeing here is a geopolitical shift of huge proportions. So lost is the West in its bubbles of self-deceiving fantasy that the hegemony it so long exercised over the rest of the world is passing to the world outside it, to India and China, even, in its own way, to Russia, still a nuclear power which can prevent us pushing too hard in our support for a bankrupt Ukrainian dictatorship, and which also still supplies Europe with a third of the gas it needs to continue functioning.

How forlorn in light of all this looks that would-be well-meaning 300-page document in which the Pope, under the spell of his chief scientific adviser, a fanatical German climate activist called Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, calls for an end to use of the very fossil fuels which keep the Vatican’s own lights on. In asking us to pray for that global climate treaty, Pope Francis solemnly trots out all those familiar plaints about “melting polar ice caps”, “rising sea levels”, unprecedented droughts, “extreme weather events” and the rest of that greenie litany which has no basis in honest science whatever.

Eric King: “You mentioned that we are in unprecedented times. And the concern is that when the 2008 collapse unfolded there was all this money printing and the banks were bailed out. It really fell on the shoulders of the taxpayers, but the concern as you said is that this leverage is growing. There are over one quadrillion dollars of derivatives. With the leverage totally ramped up in (terms of) the central banks’ (balance sheets), who will save the financial system (this time around)? Who will save the banks? There are all these bail-ins that have been written into law in the West and it seems like the next move is just to steal money from the public. Who will save the system this time when it implodes?

Nomi Prins: “When it implodes it will implode more dangerously. The IMF and the Fed have different ideas about whether rates should stay low or go up. In this particular round the IMF won. They want rates to stay low because they don’t know what’s going to happen to the global financial system if the availability of cheap money goes away….

“Right now everyone knows, whether they admit it or not, that (cheap money) is the only thing that’s keeping this (global financial) system afloat. It isn’t production. It isn’t savings of individuals because nobody has any money to save. So the only policy that these central banks have is to continue to do more of the same. And the only thing that does is continue to push this next crisis, or the second leg of the current crisis as I look at it, down the road. There is no saving this (global financial) system.

Ian Spreadbury, who invests more than £4 billion of investors’ money across a handful of bond funds for Fidelity, including the flagship Moneybuilder Income fund, is concerned that a “systemic event” could rock markets, possibly similar in magnitude to the financial crisis of 2008, which began in Britain with a run on Northern Rock.

“Systemic risk is in the system and as an investor you have to be aware of that,” he told Telegraph Money. The best strategy to deal with this, he said, was for investors to spread their money widely into different assets, including gold and silver, as well as cash in savings accounts. But he went further, suggesting it was wise to hold some “physical cash”, an unusual suggestion from a mainstream fund manager.

But then there is the shock event. Daily Telegraph columnist Jeremy Warner also captured some of the concerns this week when he wrote that the trigger for an “inevitable correction” could come from “a clear blue sky – a completely unanticipated event”.

Swedish lender Handelsbanken has one of the world’s strongest credit ratings, and prides itself on prudent lending standards. It sailed through the crash in good health, giving its British boss Anders Bouvin more credibility than most in warning of the perils of chasing high volumes of loans.

“It was like a buffalo herd galloping, in 2006, 2007. Nobody looked for direction, nobody looked where they were going, they were just following the one in front - and nobody saw the cliff coming,” Mr Bouvin said. “Our managers stood on the sides, with no target from head office. And they knew they would have to take responsibility for any bad credits.”

As a result, the bank was able to set forwards after the crash, filling the gaps left by the withdrawal of the big British banks. Handelsbanken increased its number of branches from 40 in 2007 to 197 today.