power of central bank intervention. Greece was held on the path of “reform” demanded by the troika. But as the IMF’s démarche had made clear, this was a matter of politics as much as financial crisis management. The European creditors had doggedly refused to discuss the only issue that mattered—debt restructuring. What was at stake was not macroeconomic performance but the imposition of discipline on a wayward eurozone member. Shielded from financial contagion, a conservative financial settlement had been demonstratively imposed on a left-wing government with a strong democratic mandate. The
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