I remember Athens 20 years ago. It was a big village without proper roads, with small Seat cars (the cheapest at that time) standing in big traffic jumps, without proper public traffic and people obviously living below the average European standard . 20 years later Athens looks like any other modern city in Europe, with shops selling the most expensive brands, big cars rolling the well developed roads, etc. Do not tell me they have financed it all from the income they received for olives (the only export item Greece exports). So to the question what to do, my answer is to do!!!!

Dear Robert it seems i am older than you and had the chance see the caricature publish in Economist or Newsweek front-page, where Nixon sprays the VW beetle car with 10% custom tax to reduce the deficit in current account with Europe. But then the oil price went up, and it was followed by inflation and then Regents policy of tax reduction joined by high interest rate that caused strong revaluation of the US$ against the other currencies, and this went on until Bush the father, one of the wisest presidents US ever had (Pity the Junior did not get to much of his wisdom), started policy of reverse. But he had bad luck.
Faced with a national debt that was approaching $3 trillion and a deficit that was out of control, president Bush, worked out with the Congress budget agreement in the fall of 1990. Combined tax increases with spending cuts both in defense and on social programs was intended to reduce the deficit by almost $400 billion by 1995. By the time this compromise was worked out, the country was already in the midst of a serious recession. As the result he did not get the second term and this was the end of coming to terms with the increasing deficit in the trade balance.
http://www.theglobalfczone.com/Deindustrialisatio...

Contrary to George Bush the father, the son following the dot.com crash, implemented entirely different policy. Thanks to it he was elected for second term, luckily enough the economic disaster he cooked blow up in his face before the end of his second term, othervice he and his Republican colleagues would blame the new (most probably democratic administration) for all the economic faults.

You answer forces me to sit again to the computer and leave the more interesting activities i was planning to do, yet you have right for a proper answer;
1. I never said the Greeks are solely responsible for the economic grievances of Europe, yet it is the only country out of the P.I.I.G.S. who has got by now 50% discount on its debts and it is still not enough.
2. You are probably not very good at history, if you compare the political situation today to the happenings in 1929. While at 1929 the politicians did all the mistakes they could do to deepen the economic crisis, to mention some; Letting the banking system default, increasing interest rates, creating tax barriers etc. in 2008 the world economy found itself in much deeper problem than in 1929 and the politicians succeeded, until now at least, to prevent disastrous colaps of the economic system. Unfortunately the economic fundamentals are much more disturbing than in 1929 and let me be more specific here;
a. The first main problem of the world economy is not Greece but USA, with its huge imbalance of current account, that is still accumulating, and nobody sees end to it. When the 2007 bank crisis subprime started, it was hardly mentioned, that actually the subprime system of selling balks of credits, wrapped into attractive wrappings, was actually a financial system how to bring back to US economy the US dollars from the exporting countries like Japan and China. Conclusion, all the collapse of the banking system of 2008 is default of US economy. Since then, some measures have been taken, but still the current account ended in 2011 with deficit of 600 billion US dollars up from 470 billion at 2010 figures. Greece?!?, not even rolls for breakfast compared to US dinner.
b. Fortunately Europe doesn't have the same problem of current account, but it is due to the northern countries, while all the surpluses on current account that they generate is wasted mainly in Greece and some in Portugal, Spain and Italy see the following graph.
http://www.economonitor.com/rebeccawilder/files/2...

You may say all this helped German economy to find markets for its products. But there is a big BUT. As a payment for their products they got Greece governments bonds, that have to be write of now. This not only reduces the credit rating of Germany, (unfortunately credit is not valuated just by cash flow but also by net asset value, that was deeply damaged by the write offs.), but damaged the German pension funds. You may say you don't care about the German or French banks or other capitalistic institutions, but i hope you can`t say the same about the German workers, who lost their pensions in sake of supporting the Greek waste and consumption society, without to blush.
c. The world economy is changing in front of our eyes, and nothing can be done about it. The highly industrious, highly committed, young enthusiastic Asian people want their share from the world economic cake and the less industrious, less committed, old Europeans have to give up some of their economic privileges achieved in the past. This process is unfortunately painful and politically very hard to implement.
To conclude. Nobody is blaming the Greeks, that they grabbed what others gave them voluntarily in the past. All we want is, please realize, the free party is over, the time come to pay. You want Drachma?, have it, You want out of EU, go, You want to stay, be it, but don't ask others to pay your lunch.

What most worries me are people without sense of humor, who when opposed immediately start cursing their opponent.
You think comparing European Union to Stalinist regime is an appropriate way to discuss the faults of the Greek politicians and Greek public, who brought this economic misery consciously on themselves? Who forced them to Join EU? You should know how they manipulated economic figures, just to be excepted into the Euro zone. Don't tell me they did not know the consequences of their fraud? Just check how many times in the past 10 years the economic columnists wrote about Greece, as "The sick man of EU". So you suggest, that there is no need for responsible behavior of political leaders and their supporters, and fraud and deception should be positively priced. Yes i am for Drachma. Let the Greeks have it and let them cope with the consequences. Probably their standard of living would drop with Drachma back to the situation after WW2. Then all the Communists, Populists, Fascist will be perfectly happy. This is the their time to bring their solution, to plunder the country and keep everybody's mouth shut up.

The process of reducing the taxation of the strong EU economies by PIGS countries is positive, the released financial resources have to be channeled into the investments and consumption in the EU countries with relatively low debt. And i am not speaking about Germany or Holland, but the Eastern European countries, that on one hand all (except of Hungary) have public dept bellow 50%, on the other hand in spite of being part of the European Union, have shamefully low standard of living and big deficit in infrastructure. The governments in these countries are cutting into the investments in sake of keeping balanced budgets. It is time to change this policy and allocate the finances released from the PIGS into investments in Eastern European countries. I am pretty sure, it is not only socially correct, but will bring the highest yield on investment compared to any other alterntives.