A feisty but realistic article in the Guardian by Nikos Dimitriou looks at Greece’s deep problems whatever happens:

Greece relies on imports, fuel and food especially. The agricultural sector has dropped to less than 4% of GDP – can enough be grown to feed the population? How many more businesses will close because they can’t get stock or supplies? Where do we get the cash and specialised skills to revive moribund industry to produce products needed in the country, let alone exports? Will stagflation and harsher austerity be survivable?

Tourism may boom, at least for those who don’t mind things scruffy and simple. Hopefully they won’t expect quality, and will be content with what we used to offer in the 60s – as long as it’s dirt cheap…

… The disconnect is mutual. It’s rare to find anyone who retains faith in any bastion of the state. Polled regarding corruption among various professions, 94% believed politicians are all or mostly corrupt, journalists 80%, the church 67%, judges 64%.

Such animus is justified, by revelations of how much of the country’s money they have simply lost (the state bank president reported that 30% of the budget was unaccounted for); by endless scandals that never lead to punishment; by more than three decades of much-needed improvements promised, enacted into law, then ignored.

Fear and anomie increase as we realise how profoundly wounded this society is. It seems the price of freedom from the bloated, feckless bureaucracy in Brussels is to maintain the status quo; that the opportunists will flourish; the political cabal will expand their power; that justice won’t prevail.

The only certainty is how wrong the pundits are to presume Greece’s recovery is simply a matter of "weathering the transition, increasing exports and returning to the markets".

See also an unusually cogent stream of Comments, going to and fro over how far Greece and its Leftist culture have created all this misery.

The key issue is simple. How can a country like Greece create wealth and so avoid being like a dusty poor part of Africa?

The traditional route is obvious enough. It exports sunshine in the form of tourism. But modern tourism needs decent facilities and one or two basic things like water and petrol. Cheaper-end tourism won’t pay for the imports to keep up standards on the scale Greece needs. So wealth-creating industries and activities are needed too.

Greece’s problem now is that no-one wants to lend Greece the money to help these things keep going, except at unaffordable interest rates. For all the reasons described in the above article, Greece has collectively lost credibility as a society.

Commenter Demetri is on superb form here:

Too many Greeks want money…. from someone else.The believe their are "owed" money by other Greeks…the government… .the banks… the EU…. rather than take personal responsibility for their own lives. The unions are still holding Greece hostage with their endless strikes and riots (destroying their own country)/ This is not out of principle and human goodness. Its because austerity hurt their pocket books. Their motivations are personal greed and petty envy of those that have more money than themselves… not ethics.

In reality far leftists in Greece are tax evaders and corrupt in no lesser frequency than the very "elites" they constantly scapegoat for their problems. The main difference is the far leftists expect the same money as others… but don’t actually produce enough to earn the money they think they are owed. They would rather hug a tree and write poetry rather than build a factory that produces jobs and goods.

In short, they want to live parasitically off others while whining about the injustice of it all.

… If Greeks want their dignity back they will now have to earn it through their labours not borrowing money or expecting others to fund their lifestyle. Rather than constantly whining about how the government owes them money and calling for revolution far leftist Greeks need to grow up and start thinking about how to start an export business. Or how to get practical in demand technical skills.

Rather than scheming for new ways as to how they can taking the wealth of others, far leftists in Greece need to start thinking how they can produce wealth themselves. It is morally stronger position to give than to take.

A profound conclusion lost on the tedious #OccupyLSX tent-dwellers and all the other ‘occupiers’ now being roundly ignored everywhere.

Their remedy – to make things better by ‘protesting’ and ‘making demands’ while offering not a shred of a sensible idea – is just what is NOT needed to impress foreign investor who now have money which we don’t have.

The Great Unravelling continues apace.