The main reason the Greek bailouts haven't been able to restore Greece's dying economy is that they were never designed to do that. Instead, these bailouts are just transfer payments from the EuroZone to Greece's creditors. Doubt that? Here's a proposed idea for any further bailout loans to Greece:
A major topic of discussion is expected to be establishing an escrow account that would hold new money lent to Greece, and using it first to pay creditors, before the Greek government can tap it for any other purpose
See? Like I said, this was always the main purpose of the bailouts; but now everyone involved has decided to just say "Fuck it" and drop the whole "Let's save Greece's economy" bullshit.
So what will Greece have to do to make their debt payment? Well, nothing good:
a 22 percent cut in the benchmark minimum wage and 150,000 government layoffs by 2015
Obviously, the best way to get a country out of depression is to pay whoever is lucky enough to have a job less and add 150,000 people to the current 21% unemployment rate. There's nothing wrong with that strategy at all. Nope.
So here's what will keep happening: With all the spending cuts and mass layoffs, Greece's economy will continue it's long slow death on the vine. As a result, government revenues will go down and budget deficits, and debt burdens, will increase in size and scope. This will result in the rest of the Eurozone doing what they're doing now: calling Greece lazy, irresponsible bastards who should be cut off from anymore bailout money until they get their shit together. And then there will be demands for more spending cuts and around and around this death spiral goes.
But something is going to break. With rioting in Greece, it's hard to imagine the populace putting up with much more of this whole being sacrificed to their creditors thing that they've got going for themselves. And with the austerity movement across the Eurozone doing its job of slowly but surely killing every hope of economic recovery, it won't be long until the other member states start looking to save their own skin instead of footing the bill for someone elses' pound of flesh. And if Greece misses their payment, they default. And if that happens, well, I don't really know what comes next. But I figure that whatever does, will leave me pining for the days of near catastrophe that we have now.