It is a hard problem. Forgiving the debt once is likely the right thing to do, but if you keep doing it, what is to prevent countries from just never paying at

It is a hard problem. Forgiving the debt once is likely the right thing to do, but if you keep doing it, what is to prevent countries from just never paying at all? The sorts of restructuring plans that are put into place are designed to solve this problem, but I think whoever designed them is a sadist. It is said you cannot spend your way out of a recession (and I'd agree that one off projects that don't kick start a continued source of income don't work), but you also cannot make so many budget cuts that no one in the country has a job, or a house, or a support network of any kind. Zero tax revenue does not make for a stable government. (It does make for a really corrupt one though, and a much worse type of corruption than what Greece had before)