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Originally Posted by heero_yuy
Looks like they've gone for the nuclear option. Now we see how much the rest of the Eurozone want to pay to keep them in.
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Germany can't really keep them in for political reasons. The people have been sold the image of feckless Greeks refusing to take their medicine and being obstinate.
Germans would likely not react well to being told that Greece and the other southern deficit states went into debt buying German exports kept artificially cheap by currency union, and were loaned part of the cash by Germany.
Along with that that the Greek economy was rendered uncompetitive by Germany's internal devaluation and has been laid to waste by a combination of austerity and German
mercantilism.
Germany wanted the best of everything, all the advantages of the Euro without having to foot the inevitable bill for their 'beggar thy neighbour' actions. They now demand Greece play by the rules having been happy to tear them up themselves both by their actions in the earlier years of the Euro and with the bailouts which only bear some semblance of legality through chicanery.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-790333.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-790333-2.html
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Greece's new conservative government, elected in 2004, disclosed that its socialist predecessors had been reporting manipulated figures to Eurostat since 2000, including the numbers used to join the euro zone.
But instead of criticizing Greece, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, a Portuguese citizen, praised the new government for its openness and congratulated it for taking such "courageous steps" to make up for the mistakes of the past. Now it was Greece's job to put its house in order by 2006, Barroso added.
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