I ' ve read your first four paragraphs and generally don ' t disagree with your sentiments . Nor did Varoufakis , from his own words . The dispute was that the proposed austerity measures would obviously cripple growth IIRC they were nineteen times that of Britain from 20102012 and fuck Greeks badly without ' taking responsibility ' and actually paying back their creditors . In his own words he proposed an austerity budget and it was legitimate austerity so ' responsibility ' was taken with the Greek representative volunteering the nation for ' medicine ' to the Eurogroup which was rejected and again , in his words , he had the sympathy of the British Tory Party on this matter . I would note that in all of this he did push for Greece to stay in the EU and do dispute that he ' was talking total shit and had no idea what he was talking about . ' Nor did he demand they ' just wipe out the debt ' on the threat of leaving . Seems just wrongwQ 0 wKv 5 CPtA to me . If he refused cuts and absolved the nation of any responsibility in negotiations I would entirely agree with you . The SNP example is apt in that sense . Greece merits a lot of hurt in all this although it ' s a lot more complicated than just raising taxes because of capital flight and other such phenomena . Just as the EU do in fucking fiscalmonetary convergence , dropping its own standards and operating in too political a manner when so much is at stake for so many . In that sense , the Greeks were partly let in because the Italians had already been let in and broken the rules by fiddling figures and the Greek people were debtfree which would aided the boom of the German economy with low interest rates . Those low interest rates shouldn ' t have been allowed to Greece to begin with as the entrance requirements would ' ve required Greece to shift its economy before being let in . In that regard , we can blame the Greek people but they certainly didn ' t know what was going on as they bought German cars and enjoyed economic prosperity without the fuckup of the Drachma ' s wild interest rates . Greek politicians and European politicians certainly did . The Greek people will need to take a hit for electing such politicians 15 odd years ago . But I ' m rather interested in the political motivations which allowed the EU to look the other way on economic policy several years ago .