European Central Bank.

A European Union-led bailout of its struggling member country, Greece, seems more and more likely with each day – as Greek workers strike against the government attempts to ice their swollen deficit, the word on the street is that Germany is prepared to drop its opposition to a rescue package for Greece.

According to The Telegraph, Germany’s finance minister has asked that officials prepare an outline ahead of an EU summit meeting this Thursday; the news bolstered the euro for a second day, pushing the currency up to $.138 against the dollar, the strongest one-day rally since it began to plummet last year.

Greece – and other debt-addled EU countries, including Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy – stand ready to bring down the whole of the eurozone in a dramatic test of the single currency system, op-ed writers opined today. Hamish McRae, in an editorial in The Independent that was PoliticsHome.com’s number one must-read article of the day, wrote, “Greece is the canary in the coal mine.”

Greece must – and will – be rescued, but, he writes, the terms of any bailout are crucial. And, making a point that few other opinion writers have really expressed, what will be nearly as important as how the EU handles the bailout is how the US, representing 30 percent of the world economy, responds to it.

Simon Heffer, in The Telegraph, wrote today that a single European currency has no chance of survival if its member countries continue to pursue a nationalistic ethos – and lauds Britain, as many other British writers have done so far, for not taking the euro bait in the first place. “Those of us who have argued since before the days of the Exchange Rate Mechanism that the euro would prevent us from exercising our national interest are being vindicated by what is now happening in the eurozone,” he gently crowed.

What’s the way out? Austerity. “The eurocracy imagines that the spanking given to Greece about its deficit, and the promises by Mr Papandreou, its prime minister, about good behaviour in the future will be enough to stop any ‘contagion’ with other countries in the eurozone,” Heffer said. “I cannot see why this should be so.”

Other observers also honed in on the claim that the whole situation has revealed the cracks in the single currency system. The Times, in an editorial today, gave predictable thanks for Britain’s not having adopted the euro, but also highlighted that the UK is not a bubble of fiscal health – and it matters greatly to the nation what happens to its European trading partners.

“A bailout for Greece would be politically difficult and costly, and it would set a terrible precedent. But the decision needs to be faced and accepted,” the paper editorialized, adding that Greece’s debt is, without a doubt, it’s own fault. “A bailout is not supposed to happen under the rules of the monetary union. Yet the risks are likely to be too great for the EU and the ECB to allow a default.”