In a Bloomberg post, Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT, said the euro area faces a major economic crisis, most likely a series of rolling, country-specific problems involving some combination of failing banks and sovereigns that can’t pay their debts in full.

This will culminate in system-wide stress, emergency liquidity loans from the European Central Bank and politicians from all the countries involved increasingly at one another’s throats, Johnson said.

In the Bloomberg article, Johnson notes that even the optimists now say openly that Europe will only solve its problems when the alternatives look sufficiently bleak and time has run out. Less optimistic people increasingly think that the euro area will break up because all the proposed solutions are pie-in-the-sky.

To read the full Bloomberg post click here.