[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.