This chapter explains how the intellectual principles behind the eurozone's approach to Greece and Ireland were generalised to guide policy in 2010–11 towards larger countries and to the currency union as a whole. Rather than admitting mistakes, leaders came to deem the medicine prescribed for Athens, Dublin and Lisbon suitable for the rest of the eurozone too. So long as they held on to their original diagnosis, they could not recognise that the precedents set in the smaller countries were perpetuating the crisis. The result was a disaster: a self-inflicted second recession, a poisoned politics, and a gratuitous existential threat to the euro itself. By letting the same errors govern policy towards the eurozone's bigger members, its leaders turned what had been a grave crisis into an existential one. The costs of these mistakes are still being paid in ongoing economic suffering, political ill will, and uncertainty.