let russia take over, if it ends like viet nam, soon we will have many Pizza Huts in Greece, and we will be bitching about a trade bill
If you have cancer you can choose: do nothing, let it get worse and finally die. do an operation, even if it would be painful, and try to recover. What garantee do we have that Greece will not continue to make more and more debts? Greece never did anything else. And what will we do then? Give another few hundred billions and let the rest of Europe pay for it? If the US is afraid for Russian influence, that problem can be solved quickly: the US can take over all the loans given to Greece, and then the US can tell what Greece should do. I agree that Verhofstadt is a huge idiot. But he makes massive money in the European parliamant. He protects his job, and we should pay for that. That's what we call solidarity. Russia has no money to help Greece, and all countries under influence of Russia try to get out of this virtual occupation by Poetin. Not a single country (baltic states, hungaria, bulgaria, romania...) ever wanted to return to the old Russia, unless they are forced to. Greece would be very stupid to join with Russia, but we saw already how intelligent Greeks are, so you never know.
http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/24233017/___Serviers__bond_met_Rusland___.html Don't underestimate the resentment against Germany and consequently the EU is Greece.
Serbia can go to Russia, Ukraine goes to Europe. Serbia has 7 mio inhabitants and Ukraine over 45 mio. Serbia is also 8 times smaller in surface and strategically not so important as Ukraine. So we see moves in both directions. But they are not comparable. Over the last decade (or since 1991) Russia lost control over a huge area and over millions of "slaves" because that's what Russia uses them for. Even Belarus is moving away (for as far as they can) from Russia towards Ukraine.
Greece will be de facto out when they run out of euro's. If the ECB does not increase the actual level today, it will be a matter of days, or maybe even hours. And the ECB will probably not raise the level. At this moment there is more money from the ECB in the greek banks then from savings or greek bankaccounts. So in fact the Greek banks are not Greek anymore.
i don't understand something. If Greece defaults on everything , de facto declares bankruptcy, why does it then need to leave the eurozone?
look at puerto rico, about to become bankrupt, no one has suggested it leaves the US (and the dollar).
The banks run out of money, euro's in this case. This will put the economy to a halt, there is simply no money available to conduct business transactions. To prevent that they have to re-introduce the drachme.
The point is that the EU has conducted the negotiations with Greece from a pure technocratic viewpoint. The EU refuses to accept the fact that at least part of the debt needs to be written off. The 20th century has given us perfect examples of what can happen if you force a nation into poverty, remember the Treaty of Versailles? After WWII these mistakes were avoided, unfortunately the technocrats in Brussels apparently have not studied history. I'm not saying this will lead to war per se, just saying bluntly forcing austerity isn't a solution in this case, especially considering the geopolitical location of Greece.