A snapshot of a moment in history:

November 10, 2011.  Global stock markets are falling. The yield on Italian bonds continues to rise.

A German newspaper reports that Chancellor Angela Merkel is going to float the idea of re-writing the rules governing the euro zone at her Christian Democratic Union party meeting next week. At present there is no mechanism for countries inside the euro to leave.

Merkel reportedly wants a new treaty provision that defines the ways in which a nation can leave - or be asked to leave - if it doesn't meet the basic conditions of euro zone membership. You want to know the basic conditions?: an annual budget deficit no higher than 3 percent of GDP and a national debt lower than 60 percent of GDP.  Italy's debt is currently 120% of GDP. Got the picture?

LONDON — It took long enough, but the basic outline of a deal on the euro was agreed by leaders of the 17 euro zone nations this morning at 4:00 a.m. Brussels time.

It was as advertised in my primer yesterday:

Private banks will take a 50 percent haircut on the Greek bonds they hold, which amounts to about a third of the total Greek debt outstanding. Banks will recapitalize themselves via fund-raising issues and the IMF. The European Financial Stability Facility — which started with 440 billion euros and now has about 250 billion available after Greek, Portugues and Irish bailouts — will insure future sovereign bond issues to the tune of 20 percent. By a miracle of computation, that means that the fund has leveraged itself by a factor of 5 to 1.25 trillion Euros. (Honestly, I need to do that same trick with my salary ... )

"This is a marathon, not a sprint, "said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the administrative arm of the EU. The race has only just begun. Heartbreak Hill — agreeing a euro-wide fiscal policy and other steps towards federalism — is nowhere on the horizon.