Put Backstops in Place and Let Greece Fail Now: Baker

The Domino Effect Begins.....Greece then....Italy.....Portugal.....

.Great Depression 21st Century EU collapses even when China pours Billions of Dollars trying to support the Euro.

Our politicians didn't learn from Japan's real estate bubble, subsequent collapse, and lost decade. They repeated the mistake with bad policy and compounded it. Will they learn from the danger of rapacious government employee unions and what they have done to Greece? I doubt it. The only reason for such "unions" is to elect enabling politicians so the unions can continue their rape of the taxpayer. What's going to change that?

I am a 100% Greek living and working always in Greece, running a very high quality honest business, with hard work from 9am to 11 pm for many years. The problems here since 30 years now have been the enormous costy and unproductive soviet-like state, the cost of buildings, the lack of liquidity and lack of consumption (profit and consumption are forbidden words in our market). Lately private sector has been invaded with taxes and now we are all seriously burning money. Sosialistic goverment hides very well the greek secret: In the private sector people work very hard they earn a little and they are invaded with taxes and in the public sector we have the most privileged (working) people of the world, they are a hell of a lot, they take a lot of money they don't even go to their offices and they don't face any risk and they are in these positions only because they vote for PASOK the soviet like populistic party. We in the private sector we DO NOT WANT THE IMF and the EU to give money to Greece. This money is wasted and goes only to salaries of the lazy people in the public sector that gov is cheating and instead of firing is hiring. Now the Countries that seriously want to help Greece with the money of their taxpayers the found out that Greece is cheating and they are pressing the gov and they do very well. Please do not give any more money to Greece, let the lazy be unpaid, we can so recontructure our state making it more efficient.

Concur.....if planned more countries can avoid the pit fall of debt. Listen up American.....this can be us in 5 years.

Greece had a great model -- a socialist economy in which most folks routinely tried to evade paying taxes. Couple that w/ absurdly early retirement and unsustainable entitlements, and you have an obvious recipe for disaster. Don't let them bring down the rest of Europe.

Allow the inevitable to happen and stop throwing good money after bad.

Let's keeping "investing" a simple process. If you invest money, your money is at risk and the underlying asset provides whatever return it does based on its own merits.

Since when have investors come to EXPECT not to lose their money? LET BAD INVESTMENTS DIE!! Otherwise, someone else pays and the cycle NEVER ENDS!!!!

Greece has defaulted 12 times in the past. What makes the EU think they will not again. The Euro is set up to help out the producing northern countries and all the time screwing the southern countries. There are no balances and this works great for the producing countries that rely on exporting to the lower countries. Well now it is time to pay the piper as they are not buying, but going belly up from consuming the northern countries products.

Greece needs to default or their people are going to be screwed for generations. Herein lies the rub against all the souhtern countries. They must have austerity which furthers puts them in a hole as their economies are now contracting, unemployment is up and they have run out of everyone elses money. But the leaders of EU will keep dumping good money after bad. Afterall they are spending other peoples money, pilfering the pocketbooks of millions of good citizens.

Trillions to bail out Greece?? Something is very wrong--The Greeks really screwed the Germans??

Amazing how we can tell other countries how to fix their financial problems and have no clue how to fix ours.

I agree 100%. The other euro nations are weakening their positions by continuing to throw Greece lifelines. Let the inevitable happen and move on.

"Put Backstops in Place and Let Greece Fail Now: Baker"

There isn't really another alternative.
However, Greece's Euro membership should be put on hold until they can present an acceptable restructure of their development plans going forward and one year of effective and demonstrated implementation. If they fail, that means the politicians and the population of Greece don't want to be part of the Euro and their membership should be cancelled.

Let Greece default. Greece should abandon the euro and start printing Drachmas.

If Greece is kicked out of the Euro and back to Drachma it will be good for Greece, since it will be able to devalue its currency significantly to meet its obligations and hopefully avoid default. The cost of such an action will be passed to its creditors, mainly the German and French banks who act as primary loan providers but also US and UK banks as secondary. Even if this happens, it will not improve the situation of the rest of the ailing countries such as Portugal, Ireland and Spain. This is because 1. the cost of funding the shift from Euro to Drachma will still be absorbed by EU at the cost of 200bn+ Euros in order to shore up the banks who will take up the losses arising from the inevitable Drachma devaluation and 2. Industrial output is falling in nations like Germany signalling that a recession is in the making that will make the situation of the rest of the ailing counties even worse.

Greece - Think Argentina, think Brazil - not Zimbabwe. Pain for a while but you will get back.

They need to find a way for countries to default. It is Greece now but it should be a warning to others not to get themselves into this situation. Any time one can act irresponsibly and expect someone else to bail you out it is inevitable that irresponsible behavior will get you into the kind of trouble that Greece is in now.

Screw the speculating banks, too.

Please be advised, there ARE NO "backstops".

Who will bail out the bailers?

As long as Goldman Sachs doesn't suffer any losses in the process the IMF can do whatever it wants.