The Euro is, for all purposes, a foreign currency. You are making the (in my opinion wrong) assumption that Greece default has been avoided instead of delayed.

The Euro is, for all purposes, a foreign currency. You are making the (in my opinion wrong) assumption that Greece default has been avoided instead of delayed. There is no way Greece can pay that, the only difference is that the money is now owned to international institutions instead of French and German private banks. You make also the assumption that a Greek government with it's own floating currency would follow a pro-cyclical fiscal policy, like the one force on them now, instead of a sane one. 1. I don't know anything about the Netherlands pension system, but I doubt is based in only private institutions. If they have a public system, the dutch pensioners could receive whatever the Netherlands decide through its democratic institutions, only constrained by the real resources available to the Netherlands. Of course, being an Euro country, that could be decided outside of Netherlands. 2. A country that works with its own floating currency don't need to borrow its own currency. So the problem would not be money. The biggest problem for a Greece outside the Euro, would be that they are very dependent of imports. In order to fix that you have to develop an industry. In order to develop an industry you need investment and industrial policy. That's it: the opposite of what is being forcing now in Greece.