The New York Times is very keen that somebody, anybody, “lend” Greece more money so that it can stay in the eurozone a bit longer.
I put scare quotes around the word “lend” because, as everyone knows, any money that is shoveled into Athens’s coffers will be spent and not repaid. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” advised Polonius, “for loan oft loseth both itself and friend, and borrowing dulleth the edge of husbandry.” Shakespeare is not popular by the Piraeus.
No, Greece faces what the economist Steve Moore, writing yesterday in the Wall Street Journal [1], called “financial oblivion.” There are about 11 million Greeks. They owe some $350 billion.