ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet

Ireland's industrial production is back to its pre-crisis peak, a tribute to the extent to which it has cut its costs, but still the gap between core and fringe in Europe seems to yawn ever wider.

The pattern of autumn seems set. On the one hand there will be continuing poor economic news from the weaker countries and continued pressure on them to impose yet more austerity on their people. On the other it will seem that the strong (and the fiscally virtuous) will be reaping the reward for their previous caution.

You can be harsh and say Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the like should not have allowed their booms to get out of control: that it is literally payback time, but there is a bigger point here.

This is the first crisis for the eurozone, the first serious economic downturn in its history. There are grave structural weaknesses in the whole concept, the most serious being that it is impossible to set a single interest rate that is appropriate for so many different economies. The right interest rate for Germany is bound to be the wrong interest rate for Spain.

But the political will to hold the eurozone together is enormous. Politics can, for a while, hold off economics.

There will in another decade or maybe a little sooner, be another global downturn. My own expectation is that this will force some countries to leave the eurozone. Meanwhile, don't underestimate the work that the fringe countries, including Ireland, are doing to correct their mistakes.