I haven’t done one of these animated .gifs in quite a while, but it seemed worth the effort to put together these Economist covers on the euro crisis, particularly when considering the treatment they provide for Germany’s Ms. Merkel, highlighted by that very first one.

Note that you’ll have to read fast because you can’t slow this down, despite the appearance of those little buttons in the lower right. If you’d like to view these at your own pace, just scroll to the bottom of this Economist story about Greece and the euro.

It’s funny that, in just the last five days when yours truly was away on a trip to Pennsylvania and New York City (including the two-day weekend), the European debt deal all came together and now it looks as though it’s all falling apart.

From the “comprehensive settlement” that was struck while I was flying to Philadelphia on Thursday, a day that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average soar almost 400 points, to the 500+ point drop that has occurred since yesterday morning as the Greeks have cast everything in doubt with their announcement of a referendum on the recently passed austerity measures that, if nothing else, will create a two-month period of uncertainty about whether Greece will leave the monetary union.

Today is Mario Draghi’s first day as the head of the European Central Bank and, while, he probably thought he’d have some early challenges, he probably didn’t think that this “curve-ball” from the Greek government would be one of them.

Now, anyone thinking that last week’s deal would be the end of the sovereign debt crisis was surely deluding themselves, but, conventional wisdom was that this would be another in a long series of kicks to the can that would push it down the road far enough for everyone to breath easy for at least a month or two.

As it stands, it looks like the Greek government will again run out of money right around the time of the referendum vote in January and, given the new uncertainty, MF Global could be just the first in a series of dominoes to fall that could produce a year-end financial market environment that is radically different than the one we thought we’d see just two days ago.

Even gold is selling off a bit today, but, as is usually the case at times like this, the metal is proving to be much more resilient than most other assets.