All true.

A good sign of this is probably the dow going up pretty well despite greece's troubles.

Greece, the next Somalia.

Unless China decided to help Greece, Greece is doomed.

China can use just a third of his foreign reserves to solve the Euro Crises

The Euro bankers are flexing their muscle by forcing Greek not to default on all of its debt. Part of the Greek debt has been written off as bad/default of debt and credit rating downgraded. Greece forced to take a second loan and implement6 more austerity measures that will further weaken the Greek economy, increase unemployment rates and shrink GDP. The Greek economic recovery is a long way off.

Greece should abandon the Euro and issuing its own national currency. The European nations were so much better off before the farcical Euro.

The only issue with that is, the Drachma would then GREATLY deflate vs the Euro.

Which, while it would increase exports, would end up making imports nearly impossible like somalia.

Additonally, since all their debt is in Dollars and Euros... and NOT Drahkma's, there debt would skyrocket.

When your a country, defaulting on your debt doesn't really get rid of it.

See Iceland.  Who's banks defaulted (not even the Icelandic government).

Interestingly enough, war reparations owed to Greece by Germany and never payed yet could be enough to save Greece with far smaller sacrifices.

The only solution I can see would be to proclaim the debt as "odious" and scrap it. And the haircut is 2 years late; all of our debt is now in public hands, cannot be further cut, and still large...

At which point, it would essentially extend Greece's "Somalia" like situation, where imports are worthless and nobody would want to export to greece.

An intentional "fuck you" style default is just about the worst thing a country can do as far as a situation like this goes.

Argentina did that back in 2000 and is now back in the market, no? Also, do you consider the current situation better? Or Greece's bond image any better than a default?

well no.  Argentina still isn't fully back in the international debt market for one... and it wasn't a "fuck you we aren't paying you anything default".  It was a "Forced haircut" default.

Argentina is still paying a bunch of investors money.  Others who have rejected the deal actually have the rights to seize any argentinian property that appears on foreign soil, since they've lost over 200 lawsuits.

I feel like you didn't hear anything about the argetinian default until it became obvious greece might...

I'm not sure what you meant by "Do you consider the current situation better."

Do you mean the Greek debt situation vs the Argentinian one... or Argentina now vs greek or what... but I'll answer all of them.

Is Greece's bond image any better... yes.... in that Greece can still sell bonds more or less whenever they want... on the international market.

As it is, due to the lawsuits against them, if Argentina tried to sell too many bonds... they would be seized and given to the companies who reject a forced haircut.

Is the Argenina ins a better place now then it was then?   No.  Despite huge growth due to the global rise in argicultural commodities like soybeans Argentina is still running an internal deficit and has no real way to pay for it... how have they paid for it in the past?

Nationalizing and seizing private individual citizens bank accounts, and forcing any savings not in pesos to be traded to pesos in a 1 to 1 denomination.

Selling off most of the assets of the Central bank (gold etc) to pay it's debts to it's people and the country, leaving it with hardly any collateral for anything.

Putting HUGE tariffs on everything, making EVERYTHING expensive as hell to get that can't be made in Argentina.

Nationalizing private pension funds to steal from retirees to pay for it's debts.

Coming up with reasons to ban imports from countries to widen their trade gap advantage.

Giant amounts of inflation, greatly lowering cost of living.

It's gotten so bad the Argentina is DESPERATLY trying to reach an agreement with those it stiffed before, because it needs acess to the global trade markets.  Lawsuits have generally suggested that they will have to pay interest on top of it as well.

Argentina is headed for a second default within the next decade.  One this time that is owed almost wholy to it's own people... which will end in austerity... except, it's citizens now are deprived of their savings, and it's pension fund will be bankrupt.

Now are you willing to do the above to gain a few years for Greece in the same way, essentially by robbing your citizens?  If not... keep in mind Greece would still have huge INTERNAL debt.

And no one to borrow money from.

So how would you pay that debt?

For a comparison... Greeks internal debt (What it owes it's citizens) is higher % then Argentina's entire debt when it defaulted.

Your three choices are "Austerity" or "Default on internal debt." or "Print Money"

IE, cutting peoples benefits and wages, or not paying your workers and companies you buy stuff from or massive price INFLATION along with currency devaluation.

In otherwords... pain for the average greek citizen.  Lots and lots of pain more so then austerity... and essentially never being able to run a deficit ever again... unless you pay back those who you owe.

So no, Argentina really isn't in a better place now then it would of been if it could of got a Greece style bailout.  Greece's bond image is better... in that it exists, and Greece is facing a MUCH worse default then Argentina.

All paths lead to pain, and lots of it.  A default would actually cause more.

How about Greece asking Germany to finally pay war reparations? Germany pretends strictness from others, but it plays dumb when it's its turn.