[drited]

What's the alternative for the ECB? Give €129 bn to Greek banks to replace the deposits that are bound to flee this week only to see it lost when they default after saying no in the referendum? The Greek banks would have been bust long ago if it wasn't for the ECB's emergency lending; they've been provided with €60 bn in liquidity over the last 6 months to replace the deposit flight. Not sure how you can characterise that as Greece being forced to leave by a decision from the ECB. Looks more to me like they have to leave because there are no other options left.

[harywilke]

The alternative is to start investing in Greece. To build up it's economy so we can end the Greek Depression. As it stands now the austerity packages have cut 30% off of the economy and increased the unemployment rates to nearly 30%, 50% of the youth. Those are Great Depression size numbers. Hard to collect taxes when people are not working. All these bailouts are basically just the Troika hand wringing about giving money to themselves while the country they are helping is bled dry. To date the IMF have made about 2.5 Billion, Germany profited to the tune of 100 Billion.

[drited]

I asked what the alternative for the ECB was and you suggested the alternative was to invest in Greece. Are you suggesting that the ECB should invest in Greece to build up its economy or are you conflating my question regarding what the alternative for the ECB was with a question which I did not ask regarding what European institutions in general should do?

[lifeisstillgood]

To roughly answer the above questions - the ECB and IMF need to stop. This is above their pay grade.

This is a problem caused by a fixed exchange rate (single currency) at the wrong rate for Greece and co. Without a mechanism to adjust prices for differences in cost and productivity Euros looked really cheap to borrow from germane but olive oil looked really expensive to buy in. (Germany presses and bottles and exports more olive oil from Greek olives than Greece does)

The only way to solve the problem long term is to move the money from richer (urban) parts of Europe to poorer rural parts. Stupid ideas like the CAP don't really help. Redistributive taxation across Europe (ie Federal taxes and Federal government) are the next step. But that is waaaaay out of the ECBs remit.

Syriza is basically saying - fine break my legs, but only if you can promise a European wide discussion on how we got into this mess and what a federal Europe will look like