In spring 2010, Angela Merkel addressed the German Bundestag to persuade lawmakers to approve the financial assistance programme for Greece. She had to engage in a profoundly political discourse. She employed all tools of rhetoric. And she justified her appeal by declaring that “the future of the euro is at stake”. This was legitimate.
However, in financial markets across the globe, that very same message popped up on traders’ screens as a one-liner: “Merkel questions survival of single currency”. If you were a trader, what would you do? The rest is history. One and the same message is received very differently by different audiences. But those audiences cannot be separated easily.