End of the bailouts and onto a path to a new bankruptcy

Last week's Eurogroup set up the final conditions for the end of the third Greek bailout program in August. Since 2010, Greece has borrowed 275 billion euros from European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund. Greece also shed 100 billion euros of private debt in an agreement with the borrowers in 2012. However, present debt is still over 300 billion euros for an economy of officially 185 billion GDP (plus 30 percent unaccounted illegal income). Thus, debt to gross domestic product remains extremely high.

Even though the borrowing is over, the EU and the IMF have imposed new long-term austerity conditions on the Greek economy, including additional sharp pension decreases and the requirement that Greece produces a 3.5 percent of GDP budget surplus.

To achieve this, the government has imposed skyrocketing taxes including a 24 percent value-added tax ...