The New Oxi Day

Like most toddlers, Oliver learned the word "No" right away. He uses it a lot. It's especially funny when he uses it to get his mother to play a different song while driving in the car. If he doesn't like what he hears he says, "No. No. Nooo. Nooo," until Olivia switches.

So too with Greece. It may seem like Syriza was just floundering, unwilling to either pull out of the euro or end austerity, but they've always been trying to thread a needle, as revealed in this 2012 Vaourfakis blogpost, from long before he was in office or even a prominent political figure: Greek default does NOT equal Greek exit. The argument is simple:

1. there is no mechanism for a euro country to legally exit the euro
2. a new or parallel currency would collapse as the Greek elite has its wealth in euros, and much of it offshore
3. austerity and bail-outs don't work either.

So, austerity or exit is a bad, or even impossible set of bad choices. Everything Syriza has done has been designed to illustrate this, including making marginal changes to their own offers, even simple rhetorical ones where they are willing to submit to some continued cuts in return for debt restructuring at some later date, which is what is giving Germany fits. As some remarkably bright person on Tumblr, for Christ's sake, said, "My point is this: it’s not actually the ratio of how much debt you have to how much capital you have on hand that determines your status, though you might think it definitely should be. What determines insolvency is only whether or not you admit this out loud. That’s what determines whether you can file for bankruptcy, or whether you’re insolvent. The declaration, not your balance books."

Having said all that, I suppose a grexit is still in the cards, but the wound that would open would just let all the peripheral countries out the door, and as the point of the euro is to let the center control the money supply in order to extract from the periphery, well then there's no real reason for a euro without an outer ring of countries with weak economies, is there?

Given the situation, the only immediate alternative is simply to say, "No. No. Noooo. Nooooo."