The troika talk about deregulation like the European Council earlier this week talked about "deepening the single market" as a way out of the crisis: they are true believers of an economic religion and they're not actually thinking about what policy would work or how, they're just going through ritualistic incantations and actions and wondering why they're not rewarded with growth and jobs.

"Reform" is not a smokescreen but a shibboleth.

They have destroyed the Greek economy in order to save it. One can only hope that history will set the record straight, because these people won't be able to see it by themselves.

As to the Greek elites, they're complicit, bot because they share the ideology that "reform" and "austerity" should work but because they agreed to being "rescued" from insolvency two years ago out of a misplaced sense of what "being a good European" means.

Nobody wants to be the ones to go down in history as blowing up the Euro despite the fact that the Euro institutional structures are actually toxic not just in an of themselves but toxic to European democracy.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker