Athens' thorny bailout marriage with the IMF

It was April 17, 2010, and Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull had just erupted, sending out great big ash clouds that were causing widespread air traffic disruption in parts of Europe.
In Athens, the Greek government was anxiously preparing for the first visit by its creditors' mission chiefs - if they didn't sign off on a loan, Greece would go bankrupt in a month. Time was of the essence, so the European Commission and the European Central Bank teams had to make the journey from Brussels by bus. The only official who made it in time for the scheduled meeting was International Monetary Fund mission chief Poul Thomsen, who flew in from Washington.

This incident may have been a harbinger of the central role the Danish economist would go on to play in economic as well as political developments in Greece over the next decade, in a chapter of history that came to an end with Greek...