"I had a discussion with Barroso last Friday about what can be done for Greece, Spain, Portugal and the rest and his message was blunt: 'Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They've got no choice, this is it'."

So goes the myth in Greece, too, that we had no public debt in 1974 (the day our junta fell). Which is of course true, but it had nothing to do with good management. Apart of poverty and inequalities we had nothing of everything else,too, (no roads, no electricity and drinkable water in many rural areas, no health system, no social security and low living standards).
And there is some kind of nostalgia, surprisingly not only by the hard right but also from some left intellectuals,too, for the 1953-74 period of the so-called high growth (but also high inequalities, junta and lame democracy).

Someone should open a diary on junta nostalgia by the periphery Euro elites.

"Eurozone leaders have turned a €50bn Greek solvency problem into a €1,000bn existential crisis for the European Union." David Miliband