re: #1 Dom

The plan is not as incendiary as your description of it - there is indeed deep scepticism about relations that amount to a Franco-German EU axis, evident in any negotiation over subsidies and exemptions, but in this instance Germany cannot set a precedent of being easy on an EU state that doesn’t respect the financial rules. There is a north-south split within Europe, responsible economies and essentially relaxed, maybe corrupt ones. The UK rejected the Euro primarily because of these unstable economies, not because of concern about Germany. Greece is getting schooled in adherence to basic rules: you can’t go cap in hand time after time with no plan and no intention to meet repayments, and then consider yourself entitled to negotiate, well, anything whatsoever. They are being asked to tax their wealthy and cut their spending, which is the bleeding obvious. I am not sure on what basis Syriza was trusted by the Greeks to subvert that basic trait of any honest broker.

They turned to Syriza out of desperation because the politics of EU imposed austerity has left Greece mired in a deep economic depression. Syriza didn’t create the crisis; it occurred under previous Greek governments. The blame isn’t entirely with the Greeks; creditors should’ve known that Greece was a fundamentally less credit worthy government than Germany, but they lent to Greece like it was Germany anyway. The fundamental problem is that there is a much bigger difference in wealth between Greece and Germany than there is between any two US states and no automatic stabilizers to send money where it is needed as with the US, so Greece really needs a different currency than Germany to reflect the very different economic situations between the two countries. inflicting massive suffering on the Greek people to intimidate other southern countries into toeing the line seems incredibly unfair to the Greek people.