Greece stood on its own two feet in creating the current problem!

And includes a history of employing three public servants for every one real position?

And where the money lavished on maintaining the great dinosaur of a public railway, would have been less costly, if their fare paying passengers had been put in taxis and run to their destinations for free!

Greece as a country has a proud history of almost everyone engaging in massive tax avoidance as if it were the public sport!?

Time for the Greeks to stop whining about the teat being removed and just come to terms with what must be done.

As occurred in another small country with a basket case economy!

Ireland, which before they fatuously allowed debt laden foreign speculators to kill it of in its infancy, so to speak; created the celtic economic miracle!

And as simple as investing in their own people and their better ideas; all while remaining in the euro and the common market!

The real key to their own initial success!

This is basically what Greece needs to also do! and avoid like the plague debt laden foreign speculators, which spectacularly killed not only Ireland's economy but, among others, Iceland's and Spain's as well

Whinging that the road is long and hard, won't make it shorter or easier!

Head down and bum up; and get on with it!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty is correct.

I too don’t quite understand the article writer’s point. He objects to the responsibilities placed on Greece by the Troika as a condition of the handouts and yet somehow thinks the funds should be gifted to Greece? Hello?

He demeans the very people who have saved Greece from financial Armageddon by calling them “The despised powers of occupation, known as Troika”.

He assails Alexis Tsipras as “irresponsible… [who] like his ‘right wing’ predecessors, promised one thing – freedom from the Troika's austerity -- but delivered the exact opposite – more severe austerity”

Unlike the writer, Tsipras was mugged by reality.

He claims the Troika “are killing Greek freedom”.

He is wrong. Reckless government spending married to gross incompetence (or is it corruption?) across all Greek political parties caused the problem the Hellenic Republic has found itself.

He adds that “President Obama and the IMF have been saying the Greek debt is unsustainable”. But he doesn’t face the music. That is, that Obama talks a great deal but doesn’t put his hand in his pocket. Obama expects the “unsustainability” of the Greek debt to be paid for by German, Dutch and French taxpayers.

Not by Uncle Sam!

The writer compares the “humiliations” of Greece today with that of the Germany post World War I and insinuates that what happened in Germany may repeat in Greece.

Sorry pal.

Bad example.

By 1914 Germany was the most powerful economy in Europe. Greece is not nor was it in the same economic or political league.

Six years after the War, even with all of the devastation, from 1924 to 1929 Germany became increasingly prosperous and peaceful.

The economy was rebuilt, joblessness was reduced and people began to feel secure.

Significantly, the writer ignores the very different mindsets of German and Greek leaders. Not to mention their electorates.

As to economic potency, today Greece is a bit player.

I do however think the writer’s forecast of a likely Athenian embrace of Russia is spot on.

Evaggelos epitomises the attitude that got the Greeks where they are today.

They had their Big Fat Greek Wedding, at others expense, & now don't want to pay for it. They expected it to go on for ever, with the bill never coming.

Well sorry Evaggelos that bill has arrived, & it's time to leave the reception & go out to work. That's real work too Evaggelos, no more fat pay packets for painting rocks white a few hours a week. If you can't find work, you just might to have to live rough for a while.

It is nice of the Greeks to hold this mirror up for us to see our future, if we don't stop paying ourselves more than we earn. Pity too many of us, blinded by the entitlement mentality, refuse to look.

You should save this little dissertation Evaggelos, with just a few changes to who is blamed, you will be able to use it again to explain our failure quite soon.

In ordinary parlance, “standing on one’s own two feet” means taking responsibility for oneself and the consequences of one’s actions. What Evaggelos is asking for is the opposite – for debts to be wiped out, and the Greek people to magically escape the misery of austerity without any regard for how they will pay for their brave new world of affluent abundance.

As for the dream of autarkeia, good luck with that. Look where it got Greece’s Albanian neighbours under Hoxha

I may be misremembering, but in the Aeneid didn't Virgil write:

"Beware of Greeks' bearer bonds."

Hi Jonathan,

A few months back, Tsipras tried sucking up to Putin for, presumably, a massive bail-out. In the video shot, Putin sits utterly unmoved. He was probably thinking, given Russia's 20 % economic contraction in the past year, 'Darn [Yob tvoi matj] ! I was going to ask for a few million drachma.'

Remember BRICS ? Brazil has relied too much of Vale, but it's heading for an economic cliff. India doesn't seem to be getting its act together too quickly. China may hit the shoals of economic reality sooner than we would like here. I suppose that leaves S. Not exactly a bloc.

We can't laugh. We've laid back in the sun of the mining boom, and now that's over. We've traded our manufacturing for a high standard of living. Fair enough, but we should have been innovating, scrambling, taking more of a punt of what should be our comparative advantage, whatever that might be.

In ancient times, young Greek maidens were always, it seems, in danger of being caught out by Zeus, in the shape of swans, or bulls, or frogs. [No, maybe not frogs]. If we're not careful, if we just frolic in the sun, we too might get well and truly.

Joe