I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. Greece should never have joined the Euro. There needs to be a procedure for an orderly default within the Euro. A

I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. Greece should never have joined the Euro. There needs to be a procedure for an orderly default within the Euro. A lot of the bailout conditions were counterproductive. But I disagree with the "strings" argument. If Greece defaults, the troika is threatening to do nothing more than stop loaning money to Greece and its banks. That's it. No leg-breaking. The issue that Greece's banks are utterly dependent on constant and increasing loans from the ECB in order to stay in business. This has been especially clear in the last few days: the ECB stopped increasing the amount of money Greek banks are allowed to borrow, and in response, all of the country's banks are closed and the ATMs have been limited. I think you also have the wrong impression about banks. I agree that people overreact to something like the collapse of Lehman Brothers (an investment bank). But this is something different. The Greek banks aren't just sitting on a hoard of their own money that they're afraid of losing. The money in those banks are deposits from the Greek people. When people say they are worried about the banks failing, they aren't concerned for rich people who run the banks, they're worried for the regular people whose life savings are deposited in those banks.