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Jul 6, 2015, 8:48 AM REUTERS/Stefanos RapinesA man gestures as he casts his ballot at a polling station.

Greece has effectively voted to default on its debt to the IMF and the EU, and it is a massive defeat for Germany’s Angela Merkel and the troika she led, which insisted there was no way out for Greece but to pay back its massive debts.


This is what capitalism is really about.

But that is NOT how free markets work.

The key word there is “risk.”

Take a look at Greek GDP. In order to pay back debt, you have to have a growing economy. That’s a basic law of economics. It’s how credit cards work. It’s how mortgages work. And it is how sovereign/central bank debt works. But Greece’s economy was never in a position to benefit from debt, because it has been shrinking for years: Capital Economics

The ECB president “blew up,” according to one attendee. “Trichet said, ‘We are an economic and monetary union, and there must be no debt restructuring!'” this person recalled. “He was shouting.”

And so there was no restructuring agreed for Greece. The country paid off its immediate debts to the private financial sector — investment banks, basically — and replacement debt was laid onto European taxpayers. The government agreed to a package of harsh government spending cuts and structural reforms in exchange for loans totalling €110 billion over three years.

Now, before we all start singing “The Red Flag” and breaking out old videos of “The Young Ones” in celebration, let’s inject a note of realism. Greece isn’t actually a country full of crazy socialists who don’t understand how the FX markets work. In fact, a huge chunk of its tax collection problems stem from the fact that there are two and a half times more self-employed and small business people in Greece than there are in the average country. And small businesses are expert at avoiding tax, Greece’s former tax collector told Business Insider’s Mike Bird recently.

There is something admirable about that.

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