Can I borrow 100€ from you to pay back this other guy from whom I borrowed 100€ which I then spent on alcohol? Yes please? Okay, thanks, now unfortunately you didn’t actually give me any money and it’s not my fault if I can’t pay you back because actually your money went to this other guy. It had nothing to do with me or those empty bottles you see back there, it really went directly to this evil person OVER THERE AND YOU SHOULD ONLY TAKE IT UP WITH HIM!

In other words, the money of course did go to Greece, it’s just that Greece was so far in debt by this point that they couldn’t decide for themselves on how to spend it because they first had to pay back other people. On the other hand, there is still plenty of private property in Greece so the country itself is far from bankrupt. It’s just the people deciding they would rather default on their loans and continue living than to tax the rich and wealthy.

I'm not sure why you fervently believe the banks deserve this. No-one held a gun to their head and forced them to make a loan to Greece, and it's not as if the, ah, looseness of Greek gdp calculations was exactly a secret.

Perhaps consider being pissed at the bankers that swindled all the aforementioned taxpayers into buying out their bad loans. A cynic might think this is how European government disguised the rather unpopular act of writing their banks a huge-ass check.

German, Dutch, et al banks -- specifically banks that had unacknowledged bad loans to Greece -- have several hundred billion more than before. Public sector balance sheets have that much less.

Where did the money from all these bonds go? To Greece.

In this unjust world, as it happens, "I" was bailed out by the taxpayer community that stepped in and made me whole; however, it's clear that you still can't repay them like you couldn't repay me. What are they supposed to do? One option is enslaving your family for a long time (austerity); another is to just let go and forget about the money, you just won't do business with them anymore (which is what is happening, with the previous Greek elite being slowly kicked out); another still is knocking on my friend's door. Note how this last option is always absent from public discourse. In any case, now I'm free to pontificate on how bad you are and how I shouldn't have given you money in the first place because you're a lazy scumbag, although of course I knew this from day 1. Is that fair?

I've seen accusations that the high military spending goes to northern European arms dealing countries. I have no idea if that's true but the pattern is very familiar, the UK have a long history of giving "foreign" "aid" which is basically giving taxpayer money to arms dealers.

And again in 2012, it was widely speculated that the bailout was granted on condition that Greece kept up buying stuff from Germany: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/19/greece-military...

And these are the first two google hits, really.

Adding a bit of context: Greece basically had a full-out war with Turkey over Cyprus about 40 years ago, and tension has been high ever since. The Cyprus issue is one of the many sticking points that resulted in Turkey being refused EU membership. If you look carefully at maps, you'll see that many Greek islands are extremely close to the Turkish mainland (tourist guides joke that you can get "instant Greece" when visiting Turkey with a quick boat trip). Part of the reconstruction process of Turkish national identity after the end of the Ottomans involved ethnic cleansing against long-time Greek enclaves. This is complicated further by the Cold War and the strategic location of both countries, which means they both "have to be" NATO members by hook or by crook (i.e. the US will never let them go). In this framework, high defence spending is not unnatural; however, reliance on specific northern-European dealers is a bit suspect.

One of the things people have been laughing at the Greeks for is that they don't even have a Cadastre listing who owns what land. Apparently this is proof the Greeks are all lazy, tax-avoiding thieves. In Scotland they're trying to achieve the same thing as they only know who owns about a quarter of the country.

Unfortunately the very rich aristocrats who own this land have been trying to prevent it since apparently knowing who owns land is some dark secret they're worried about getting out. They've been writing articles, such as the one by the UK prime minister's father-in-law Lord Astor, comparing this compiling of a list of ownership to the behaviour of Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

So, are we living in democracies with government responsible to citizens? I'd say to a great degree we don't, and like many soldiers who fought in European wars last century I think it becomes clear that you have more in common with the ordinary people of other European nations than you do with the ones guiding you into wars, or continuations of the same via diplomacy or economic shock doctrines.

Please don't sell me that socialist BS. I live in ex-socialist country and there is always trash talk about elites, aristocrats and capitalism on our long coffee breaks but guess what? You know what those people cry for? Socialist dictators and God-All-Mighty state.

Grow up. It is your fault mostly.

Elites exist, it is not a mystery cloaked in enigma. Most of people on Earth could say I'm part of elite just for being European. But you are talking about powerful elites who work in mysterious ways to control all Greek people votes.

If they haven’t, that’s an issue internal to Greece to be sorted out by Greek people. You can’t continuously elect corrupt oligarchic governments for 40 years and then turn around and shout “Not my fault!!” if these governments don’t act in your best interest.

Oh, like Americans complaining that they didn't want to invade Iraq? Those same Americans who have elected Bushes and Clintons for about 30 years now? Yup, quite unacceptable, really. They don't even have the excuse of having been ruled by a dictatorship for 10 years because of the Cold War, or having been born on one of the most strategic bits of land in the world from a military perspective, or having to fight ethnic wars with their immediate neighbours.

Someone once said something about beams in your own eye...

Now for the economical elites this is a much better situation, they get to present the whole situation as lazy Greeks causing problems, present the rest of Europe as the good guys, and pretend that the money we lent them should have saved them somehow.

It's important not to forget all the sides that caused the problems on 2008, just because we already solved the problems of one of the sides it doesn't absolve them from the responsibility.