Former IMF economist Arvind Subramanian made a selected argument in a 2012 article in the Financial Times: “Expelled from the eurozone,” he wrote, “Greece might prove more dangerous to the system than it ever was inside it – by providing a model of successful recovery.”
This is certainly one possible scenario, and it is perhaps the main consideration that keeps the troika from inflicting even more punishment on Greece. But the point of this discussion is not to argue that Greece should leave the euro. There are political difficulties involved in such a decision, for Greece or any other country that is caught in this terrible recessionary trap and does not have sovereign control over its most important economic policies.
In Greece,
…show more content…
Leaving the euro –under any scenario – would at first impose unknown economic costs on most Greek voters. Any government that wanted to survive the initial crisis would want to convince the public that there was no choice, and that they had not been reckless but had done what they could to reach a …show more content…
A government has been elected with a mandate to renegotiate its most important economic policies with the European officials who have been deciding it – with a result that is widely seen as a terrible failure -- for nearly five years. It is a mandate that the new government, led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, seem to have taken seriously. At this writing it remains to be seen whether there will be a compromise that European officials and the Syriza government can accept, or whether Greece’s recovery will take place outside of the Eurozone.
In many ways, the confrontation between the European authorities and the Syriza government in its first month was a repeat of the process described in the previous chapter, with European officials using – and in this case even exacerbating – a financial crisis in an attempt to force the new government to capitulate. For example, on February 4, 2015, the (ECB) announced that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and government-guaranteed debt as