[Ygg2]

AFAIK that Junta was removed almost 40+ years ago. It's effect is lesser than something that happened relatively recently.

Meanwhile, by refusing to help Greece with its debt, not only did EU increased the debt, but inadvertently legitimized the right option, by saying there will be no debt canceling (which was left position at the time).

[oneplane]

Giving money in exchange for reforms seems like help to me. You're helping when you teach a man to fish, not when you just hand him a fish to only eat for one day.

[ivalm]

Except the reforms were not reasonable. More like telling a man to cut off an arm to get a fish. Doesn’t teach you to fish in the future and creates lots of suffering in the present.

[oneplane]

I wonder who would be suitable to decide what is reasonable. Is it:

a) a country with a record of mismanagement and debt it cannot pay back

b) a set of countries that do not have a record of mismanagement and have the ability to help out a country that is in debt

If we take your metaphor we could say the choice is:

a) do not accept the terms and starve to death

b) cut off your arm and live with rules to live by to prevent the scenario from repeating

[phs318u]

Let me rephrase your first (b).

b) a set of banks who were willingly ignorant that they were lending to a state with a history of bankruptcy over many decades, because they believed/knew that when push came to shove the EU (taxpayers) would bail them out (which they did. You realise that the Greek "bailout" was a bailout of the EU banks that lent to the Greek state).

[dash2]

I think it is widely accepted that the terms imposed on Greece were unreasonable – not just because they caused very high unemployment and poverty, but also because they were based on a completely unrealistic assessment of the country’s ability to pay back its debt. A good book on the topic (and much else) is Adam Tooze’s Crashed.

[Hamuko]

>Except the reforms were not reasonable.

So the optimal option would've been to leave Greece to its own devices?

[fauigerzigerk]

The optimal option would have been to demand root and branch reforms in exchange for very substantial debt relief.