With just three weeks until the Greek snap elections on January 25 in which Tsipras' Syriza is virtually assured of victory (unless somehow G-Pap's “new and improved” political party manages to steal enough votes to prevent this, although one wonders what his political campaign will be: “vote for us because this time we know how to avoid a sovereign bankruptcy”), Germany takes yet another opportunity to remind the Greeks that it won't be blackmailed (spoiler: it will) into another year of funding the insolvent Greek state which in turn will pretend to engage in another year of “reforms” (spoiler: it won't). Recall it was on New Year's Eve when Merkel's chief advisor Michael Fuchs explicitly used the “blackmail” word saying:

“If Alexis Tsipras of the Greek left party Syriza thinks he can cut back the reform efforts and austerity measures, then the troika will have to cut back the credits for Greece,” he said.

“The times where we had to rescue Greece are over. There is no potential for political blackmail anymore. Greece is no longer of systemic importance for the euro.”

Today, concerned that Tsipras' ascent to power will mean precisely that, namely more “blackmail” by Greece of Germany and the Eurozone, as a Grexit opens the way for a collapse of the monetary union and a return to the Deutsche Mark which would cost Germany far more than continuing the annual charade of keeping Greece in the Euro, Spiegel is out with another piece saying “Bundesregierung hält Ausscheiden Griechenlands aus dem Euro für verkraftbar”, or loosely translated, the Federal Government considers Greece's exit from the euro manageable.

In the article Spiegel says, per Bloomberg, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, contrary to the German government's previous stance, consider a Greek exit from the euro area to be manageable because of progress made since height of sovereign debt crisis in 2012, Der Spiegel reports in e-mailed summary of article, citing unidentified people close to govt.