The Greek election outcome is as realists predicted and much worse than the bankers in Frankfurt hoped for. It also makes manifest the oldest rule of all, regularly forgotten in time of plenty by the minority to whom the majority of the plenty flows. It is this. There is a social limit to economic policy and that limit has been breached in Greece. The population have had enough. It is nothing short of a humanitarian outrage that in Greece today families are homeless and sleeping on the streets and children faint from hunger at lessons in school. Whatever Europe stands for or thinks it stands for it is not that.
Greece went bust. It was bailed out, but only ten per cent of the bail out money went into the Greek economy, the rest went to its creditors. They should have lost all for being so stupid as to fund a Greek lifestyle which was both ludicrous and unsustainable, based as it was not on revenue but on debt. Whatever the deal now struck to keep Greece in the euro, or even if none and Greece crashes out, the Greek people have now to apply themselves to building an economy based on revenue not borrowing, in which wealth is fairly shared and when all taxes are paid by everyone on the nail, in sufficient volume to fund the state and all the obligations they demand of it.
That is the fact. The detail of how do do it is the argument. If Euroland wants Greece to stay it will have to come up with a plan which gives the country a chance and which does not involve children fainting from hunger and people sleeping on the streets.