The Greek Crisis and Financial Assistance Programmes: An Evaluation

We analyse the background of the Greek debt crisis and evaluate the three Greek financial assistance programme. The crisis and the first programme’s (2010-11) failure were mainly the result of misguided internal policies. The second programme (2012-14) achieved progress towards recovery but this was fragile and was cancelled out by Greece’s stand-off with her lenders in the first half of 2015. The stand-off was one that predictably Greece could not win, due to the lack of a credible growth plan; and the adoption of a transparently non-credible ultimatum-game strategy. These explain the signing of the third programme in August 2015.