Your choice, it was good while it was importing. At any rate would you rather Greece continued to take loans it cannot repay? If not, then I would assume you must have been mad at the previous greek governments, not this one.

Of course not. It is beyond comprehension why other europeans had to take responsibility for the money lent by banks. However the point was that the "lived above their means" is an unhelpful and easily misinterpreted statement-at least I hope Schauble did not mean it this way- that is neither accurate, nor fair.

So, now that Greece finally has a government that was not involved in any of this, they have to be disgraced and enter a coalition with those that lied, cheated and falsified. Is this the plan?

"lived way above their means” for decades. I am not sure how this was meant, but the point is that any individual, no matter in what country, has a work agreement and makes money based on that agreement. In fact individual greek citizens have one of the lowest private debt. When one works and expects to earn what one's contract says, one does not do the state's work to check where the money is coming from. Football players do not check their club's income sources. Engineers focus on producing products and not check whether the contracts that pay their salary was obtained by means of bribes. So I am not sure how this statement was meant, but I am not sure an ordinary citizen should have realized what the lending banks apparently failed to realize. If that is the case, football players, engineers or even the guy who unknowingly sells a hamburger to a robber is guilty. People vote for a party for many different reasons, usually because they consider it the lesser evil. In this specific case there was and still may be hope to end the corruption of the previous governments and a policy that was not working. To stay in Euro, they may need some breathing space. We'll see if they get it.

As it stands Greece cannot pay its debts. The recipe of the troika thus far was " by means of unemployment, lowered wages and taxation, force people to dig deep into their savings". Which would be at least effective if that state income were used to pay back debt. As it is, it (together with new loans) was used to pay back INTEREST (as well as feed the friends of the previous governments). Needless to say, at some point savings run out and you are left in a situation where you can pay neither interest, nor debt. What then?

Also note that asking people to make sacrifices for their country or their company is ok. Asking them to make sacrifices with no end so that the CEO can give himself a doublingof his salary or that the people who created the crisis by voting for deficit upon deficit, populating public service with their friends, wasting money and doing nothing about public administration and tax evasion, all these while being handsomely paid and having sworn to look after the country's interests, pay nothing, is looking for suckers.

Free market you say? Meaning the greek state intervening at the troika's insistence to unilaterally change existing PRIVATE contracts and agreements by law? Is this your idea of a free market? And mind you, the net effect of these changes is that the state LOSES direct and indirect taxes -not to mention credibility- and competent people leave. Love the preaching " agreements must be honored", but meaning agreements with the lenders only and in order to do so, all agreements with subhuman natives must be changed.