You mention bankruptcy, it should be noted that Greece was loaded up with debt it could never hope to pay back to private French and German banks, and it was no

You mention bankruptcy, it should be noted that Greece was loaded up with debt it could never hope to pay back to private French and German banks, and it was not allowed to declare itself bankrupt and restructure. Instead, they kept "extending and pretending" rather than restructure the debt. Some economists have called it a modern form of debtors prison. The Greeks also had no control over monetary policy as a result of being part of the EU currency union so they were essentially at the mercy of the banks and the EU leadership.