Karolos Papoulias, the grizzled president of the Hellenic Republic and veteran of the Greek resistance in World War II, declared: “Our country has reached the edge of the abyss.”50 On May 6, the Greek parliament convened to vote through what was the most draconian austerity program ever proposed to a modern democracy. That morning, the ECB board was meeting in Lisbon and reporters e-mailed the news that the imperious Jean-Claude Trichet had refused even to discuss the possibility of stepping in to buy Greek bonds.
