[taliesinb]

That's nonsense. It owes $500 million in a few weeks to IMF, and the obligations keep coming after that. They require continual renewal.

Without debt forgiveness or some kind of GDP-linked scheme, they will slide even further into debt over the next 5 years.

An analogous thing happened multiple times in Africa, too: kleptocrats took out wopping IMF loans for impractical infrastructure projects, stole most of the money, the infrastructure rots, and then over the next few decades the country would end up paying 3 or 4 times the original principal back to the rich Western creditors, having gained nothing, and often having to engage in those euphemistic "structural reforms" that actually end up killing people (you know, if your mosquito net budget goes to loan repayments instead, children die of malaria).

The situation with Greece is very close. The contrast between debtor and creditor is not as stark, but the dynamics are the same.

[Paradigma11]

The EU refinances greece debt with low interest loans (afaik 1%) with payments and interest starting in 2020. How could greece pay back their loans without a real primary surplus: http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2014/04/23/greek-primary-surpl...