Opinion of Alexis Tsipras

[Silent Hunter]

First rule of international diplomacy is that the sausages are supposed to be made in private.

Venting your spleen on Twitter about the peeps you're trying to reach a deal with isn't a smart move

[Silent Hunter]

You know, this whole thing started because a batch of people who shouldn't have had loans asked for them and the banks decided to lend them money anyway.

[Silent Hunter]

You know, this whole thing started because a batch of people who shouldn't have had loans asked for them and the banks decided to lend them money anyway.

And if they denied loans to Greece?

If they'd denied them back in the 1980s, we wouldn't be in this mess. In fact, a lot of the mess in the developing world is due to loans being given during the Cold War to military juntas so they could buy weapons... and it became so impossible for them to pay back as well as preventing governments from looking after their people properly, a lot of it (after pressure for campaign groups) was forgiven. Look up the Jubilee 2000 campaign to see what I mean.

[Silent Hunter]

So that makes it okay to impose such harsh austerity that people are starving in the streets while the rich don't pay a dime?  that

Sadly, that's not solely a Greek issue; we're having problems with malnutrition in the UK as well due to benefit cuts.
People

[Silent Hunter]

And now it looks like they might not get it back at all...

[Silent Hunter]

I've been generally sympathetic to the Greek plight, but this is pretty reckless behavior by Tsipras.  I think that the referendum is a good idea in principle, but pulling out of negotiations and springing this on everyone like this is highly irresponsible.

Most people in the pro-European camp realize now that Tsipras's plan all along was to waste time with a sham negotiation until the last minute, then denounce them for being unreasonable and use the subsequent turmoil as an excuse to leave Eurozone and return to drachma.

I'd imagine that many of the creditors were rather annoyed that they had to learn about the referendum plan on Twitter.

ECB is expected to end emergency lending to Greek banks today according to BBC sources.