Greek Economy Remains a Mess
Five years after the onset of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, Greece remains debilitated by economic and fiscal crises. Out of desperation, the Greek voters elected the left-off-center Syriza Party to head a government that ran on a platform of repudiating the austerity measures imposed on Athens in exchange for loans and debt right-offs from the European Monetary Union members and IMF.
When the Greek debt crisis first arose, there was fear of contagion, leading to massive bailouts for Athens, largely funded by the German taxpayer. Those taxpayers are now fed up, and it would be politically inexpedient for Angela Merkel to go back to the same well to provide further assistance to Greece, especially when its government is openly engaged in anti-German rhetoric.
The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is basically offering a poison pill to his European partners; we don’t want o leave the Eurozone–but neither do we want to pay the fiscal price of remaining, so save us with more cash, or we’ll blow up the Eurozone. Problem is, more Europeans, especially decision makers in Germany, are becoming increasingly accepting of a Greek exit from the Euro, on the premise that it would not be as bad as Athens thinks for the remaining partners in the Eurozone.
The bottom line is we really do not know how the international markets or global economy will react to a Greek exit, but this is a scenario that is looking a lot more plausible than only one year ago.
If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA: