Thanks for the perspective @panagiotis

What do most Greeks on the street think is the answer? I realize there are no easy options at this point, but it seems to me that more austerity measures are doomed to fail. Is the answer to leave the Euro, re-introduce the drachma at some devalued level and try to re-invigorate the economy?

Your comment seems to suggest that the government is the actual problem. If that's the case, then is it useless to discuss tactics without some radical departure from your current government?

In fact goverments are the issue. But not only Greek goverment, as you see the problem with the economy so far here is that for some years now the heavy industry and all the prospects of self-sustainability have been minimised so that larger economies such as the German and the French can sell their products within the European Union. With a Greek economy depenting now largely on imports how to reinvented if you don't invest on it but rather reduce its size even more (austerity?). It is plain mathematics or economics if you like. Thus the decision to take austerity measures is not economic but i think political! The debt of the country increases as we get new loans to pay the interest of the previous ones. I can't imagine Brussels or the IMF not recognising this. On the other hand, leaving euro would mean leaving european union, with far greater implications worldwide....

I will have to agree that the decision for the austerity measures is political and not financial. To add to the discussion at hand, the decisions for the way that the European funding was used for the past 30 years in the country was also political and not financial. Meaning that, there was very little invested in industry(that of tourism mainly), health, education, infrastructure. Instead of that, large amounts of money went to the pockets of politicians, union leaders but also in the hands of people with no particular authority. In my opinion, the above fact, that is incorporated in the culture of people in the country, is the most difficult thing to change.

Wow. What a perspective. But how much do we really think the Greek currency crisis threatens the greater Euro? This is the point that I get so many conflicting stories around.

wow I had no idea there were growing neo-nazi sentiments in Greece. Certainly something we aren't hearing in the papers, if it is indeed growing.

@brent. Unlike gangrene, where you cut on member off and you survive, the European Union can't afford to show that it is loosing it's cohesion, since the markets will immediately start attacking the next weakest link and so on...Dont forget that Greece only has a debt of 300bn, in contrast to Spain, that has 1.2trillion, Italy 1.9 trillion, Germany 2.8trillion etc. The calculated cost of Greece leaving Euro is about 1.trill, so you see it is much much cheaper to keep us in, and while all this is going on, the rest of the European nations, can prepare to minimise the effects of another market attack.

@benlat. Greece is the gateway of immigrants from Asia to Europe, the percentage of illigal immigrants to the general population is about 10% and as you can imagine, since there are no jobs to work on, crime statistics have rosen dramatically over the last 5 years. It is logical, although extremely unfortunate that such parties have such growth.

And wow! i speak too much!