It'll be painful in the short term but there is no way for Greece to survive on the Euro.

The pain will be bad though and will any government last long enough to get through it to the other side.

It's a good sign.

Nothing will come of this.

Sometimes a bridge has to be burned, even knowing it will never be rebuilt.

but surely not as painful as keeping it.

After hearing parts of the BBC coverage about it, I would hope they do kiss the Euro goodbye and get on with their lives in recovery.

The EU was a mistake and should be dismantled. It's a scheme cooked up by the same asswipes who crashed the economy and are trying to shove TPP up our asses. This, I hope is the beginning of the end of KorporateKapitalKronyism.

Go Greece!!!

A perversely bloated bureaucracy where nothing got done without bribes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakelaki
Need a surgery? You better bribe the surgeon or you never get an appointment.
Need a good job for a relative? Public sector jobs for everyone (you like)!
Rich people avoiding taxes, but that's no problem: Greece could always run up more debt!

And Tsipras promised to return all those unnecessary positions that the EU forced Greece to get rid off. Why grow the economy when you can dole out public sector jobs where people have nothing to do? It's a great way to manipulate, errr... adjust the unemployment figures!


The EU was too harsh to Greece, but if Tsipras gets his way, Greece is fucked.

Dump the Euro, default on their debt, reintroduce the Drachma, roll the printing presses, and no longer be beholden to anyone outside of Greece. What would be the downside of this?

and the wheelbarrow inflation of the Weimar Republic which tried the same thing? In that scenario what would you sell your imports to Greece for? Greece is not self-sufficient and who would want to accept a redux of DR Congo billion dollar bills?

so the Weimar analogy does not fully hold up.

And plenty of countries have defaulted on their debt in the past but have been able to return to the capital markets.

only 21 billion marks. Greek debt as % of GDP dwarfs that.

Even if they can convince their creditors to accept likely devalued drachmas as repayment, unless they get tax revenues that exceed their non-austerity spending they will need to borrow more, with an already 177% debt to GDP ratio, and that won't be cheap.

Both better collections AND spending controls will likely be necessary. Greek public sector workers can retire at 58 on 80% final salary pensions, compared to Germany's hardly-plutocratic 70% many years later.. Given life expectancy that locks you into a near 1 to 1 employee/pension recipient ratio. The ability of the wealthy of Greece to avoid taxes and the corruption of the tax authorities that abet them are justly legendary.

It's worth mentioning that other EU countries own 60% of Greek debt - the IMF and ECB combined are about 16%. So stiffing creditors will just hurt other nations who were there to help. Will they come back to help again after that?