Ah the old specter of "everyone dies when debts aren't paid". Needless to say ... no that doesn't happen. First of all quite a bit of revenue becomes available to the state if debt repayment is suspended. That can cover at least some stuff for some time. Second money markets will immediately be prepared to re-loan to said country.

The only thing in danger from Greece's bankruptcy was Deutsche Bank shares and executive bonuses. Ditto for a number of other European banks. And of course ECB credibility (it had, after all, used it's legal power to force banks to buy Greek shares. If they were bad ... well)

By the way, you do realize that part of the rescue of the Eurozone that happened was letting European banks leverage up ? Right now they're allowed to be levered up 40:1, and that's ignoring the result of the enforcement organizations looking the other way. In practice therefore it would be fair to say that Euro banks are more levered than that. That means that if the Eurozone economy goes down by 1%, and bad loans go up by 1% as a result (history teaches that it will in fact be more than that if a recession happens), that every European bank as a result will lose 40% of it's value ... Does that sound like reasonable and safe financial management ? 8 years since the last recession (historically they happen about every 8 years). And yet, no complaints from you. The EU is even fighting (and fighting VERY dirty I might add) in organizations like the WTO against people insisting on more safety. And yet, you don't seem to care, or even know, that this has happened.

> Probably no country follows them all the time

First of all, most countries never follow them. It is literally exceptional for any country in the EU to make it's agreed to spending goals. Second this is NOT the point. The point is that the rules are selectively enforced (or should I say, they have been enforced once, on Greece, and never again), and therefore aren't the real rules.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...

The only countries that have not built up extra debt every single year in the past decade are Germany, Estonia and Denmark. None of them have 5 years of surplus. Only one has 3. Summing all the numbers up comes to 3 digits negative, and a massive amount of extra debt (and each of those countries agreed not to increase it's debt load)

Your conclusion is VERY invalid "And it shows - they are stagnating". If that's true, why isn't every rule violator stagnating ?

Allow me to give you an alternative explanation: because they lack the political power to force the ECB to inject billions into their economy. THAT is their failure, and not their spending habits.

> And yet they didn't have to be rescued on such a scale.

WTF ? EVERY EU country got more bailout from the ECB than Greece. And if you count the money they saved because of the interest rate interventions by the ECB, oh my God did they get more money than Greece. Again you keep blaming this on the victims. The difference is so great that if you count the interest cost, one can comfortably assert that Luxembourg got more bailout than Greece.

So what have we established :

Greece was not a bad spender, compared to other EU countries

Greece was not an inefficient spender, and in fact could serve as an example for at least France, Italy and Spain

Greece did not make financially unsound decisions, it just had it's interest rate hiked on it and no support from anyone, creating a debt spiral it is still in. Mind you the same happened to a lot of other countries, and the ECB immediately intervened to force interest rates back down to prevent it. The ECB is still at it, and at this point has transferred more than 2 TRILLION euros to banks.

In other words, the big difference between Greece and other countries, is not the Greeks' doing. It is the deliberate actions of the ECB. In other words, government intervention.

If you meet a Greek and he is very angry at you, know that you deserve it, as you are in fact responsible, in the democratic sense, for the decision that made the difference. For the decision that caused the misery Greece is currently experiencing. The Greeks very much aren't responsible for it at all.

> They are not though. They are two different organizations.

Only in the same sense that Google Inc has only 6 employees. Yet when people say Google has 80000 employees people tend to find that accurate. The EC is the equivalent of "wholly owned" by the council, as the council hires and fires the commissars, therefore saying they're one and the same is not even slightly a stretch.