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Rory Doyle writes in a personal capacity. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent those of AIM or its investors.

And then it came...today was the most volatile day in the financial markets since the height of the financial crisis, and as the Dow dropped 1000bps someone turned to me and said the following: Greece is to the sovereign crisis what Bear Stearns was to the financial crisis, with Spain or the UK to become the Lehman Brothers that plunges the global financial system back into the abyss.

Maybe...but at the very least we've turned a very dark and volatile corner. Forget the fact that technical glitches and erroneous trading caused the Dow to shed over 700bps in just 15 minutes this afternoon, which between 2-3pm made it feel like it was September 2008 all over again. The markets are telling us something, and Europe better wake the hell up and finally listen.

The panic is back.

Blood runs through the streets of Athens while EU policymakers dither. The ECB is disturbingly absent and elections in the UK and Germany hang over Europe like a proverbial sword of Damocles. How ironic it is that a German Chancellor may be the one to doom the Euro as we know it. Angela Merkel's shameful electioneering while Greece moved closer to default and Spanish and Portuguese spreads widened by multiples should be held in contempt. She should lose her job for failing Europe and, ultimately, failing Germany as well. The cost to Germans has risen exponentially over the past three months.

At the moment I'm less interested in hearing about Greece's dismal and fraudulent track record and more interested in seeing Europe act decisively. How cute that those same European leaders who leveled smug cheap shots at the US and 'Anglo-Saxon Capitalism' in recent years should so suddenly find themselves on the other end of the microscope. The eurozone's structural deficiencies have been laid bare and a decade of turning a blind eye to the blatant flaunting of the eurozone's fiscal rules by countries big and small, periphery and core, compounded by countercyclical fiscal expansion in 2008/09, has run its course. We seem to have reached the point where monetary union can no longer function without a viable political union, which despite all past illusions Europe clearly lacks. Compare the actions of the EC, ECB and Germany to those of the Fed, Treasury and White House at the height of the financial crisis. That's right...they don't compare at all.

Ultimately contagion is the biggest risk to Europe and the financial system, and I am considerably less confident this evening that a cataclysmic shock wave across European sovereigns can be avoided. Just look at the tangled web of exposures and liabilities running throughout the European banking sector (via the NYT). Without getting into the weeds, but I highly recommend seeking out analysis on the European banking system's complex exposure to Greece, one important point should be made: Greece is to Europe's banks what AIG was to Goldman Sachs. AIG was nothing more than a pass through mechanism to bail out Goldman Sachs, just as much of the bailout money heading into Greece will be paid right out to the holders of Greek debt, mainly German and French banks. Too bad Angela Merkel didn't do a better job explaining this to the German people, she might have had the courage to act, and Spain and Portugal might not be staring down the barrel of a gun tonight.