1. Events have reached the point where even the German leadership admits the Greek debt is unsustainable, but the parties have done nothing meaningful to change their positions in the negotiations over debt relief. How ridiculous is that?
2. A large part of the problem here is that there is no bankruptcy process (i.e., one ultimately guided by an independent third party using a well-established body of law) for the parties to use. Instead, all decisions result from negotiations between parties with decidedly unequal bargaining power. The unsatisfactory outcome of that process was and is inevitable.
3. The essential difference between Greece and the other EU bailout recipients is that Greece had both a governmental overspending/credibility crisis and a euro-driven private sector bubble, while the others only had the latter. If you are looking for reasons why the Greeks are in a bigger bind than the Spanish and the Irish today (life isn’t exactly paradise in those countries, either), start there.
4. In retrospect, the Greek government would have been better served if it had sucked up to the Germans and conceded that their system needed a complete overhaul to be more, well, Germanic, in exchange for some debt relief. Instead, they turned the issue into an EU referendum on austerity, and lost.