Greek Tragedy

Who’s running the world? From The New York Times.  The emphasis is mine:

In the short term, Greece remains the central problem. Two bailouts have not been enough. Greek public debt continues to mount, and so does the pressure on the government to find more revenue and make more cuts. Europe’s strategy, to the extent it can be discerned, is to put off restructuring Greece’s debt as long as possible and build up enough backing for a bailout fund so that banks with large exposure to the sovereign debt of Greece and other troubled euro-zone countries, like Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, can survive an all-but-inevitable Greek default.

But the austerity-driven recession in Greece has made its budget deficit even worse than experts predicted, and the country has not kept all its promises to the “troika” — the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank — that is keeping Athens afloat. Experts from the troika left Greece a month ago in unofficial disgust; they returned last week only after getting fresh promises of action.

Athens is again at the brink. Without the next tranche of aid from the troika — 8 billion euros — Greece could immediately default. So the troika is playing hardball, trying to force Athens to make crucial structural changes that lenders think will never happen otherwise.

Austerity-driven recessions? Never heard of such a thing…