Karen, David: Good observations, but you're missing one key factor. In these two scenarios, greedy people seem to want protection from their stupid actions. If the greedy banks (many being German) hadn't lent profligate Greeks so much money they wouldn't have needed to be bailed out by the ECB and the IMF. But those banks figured they had a one-way bet: the ECB would ALWAYS bail them out. And they did. In the "olden days", lenders took risks that they could lose their money - and maybe charged high interest rates in expectation. Nowadays not - charge high rates, sure, but somebody else please protect my capital. Likewise the silly "elevator boys" in China. Yep, they're just gambling on what they thought was a one-way bet. Sadly, the Chinese government has stepped in. But the share values haven't gone back up. The values are mainly just frozen for a while. So this "new normal" - that stupid greedy people talking risks must be protected from harm is just backwards. And eventually it will stop. The "righteous" attitude of the German people/taxpayers is annoying. If they understood matters fully they would just bite the bullet and bail out the Greeks. If the German (and other EU) banks had failed under bad loans, they would have had to bail out THEM out five years ago. If they eject Greece now from the eurozone (and maybe even from the EU) now, the value of the euro will rise sharply (to "new DM" levels) and German exports will decline sharply, worsening their current account and causing them hardship in the next five years. But there's no point in blaming the feckless borrower for the actions of the reckless lender. You might as well blame poor Americans for the melt-down of the subprime market.