A 25% drop in GDP, chronic unemployment and forgotten illnesses that appear again. These might be the consequences of a war, but it is Greece after the 2010 sovereign debt crisis. Some of the effects happened due to the decisions taken by the so-called “Troika”: ie. the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their objective was to maintain—“whatever it takes”—the repayment of the Greek debt. In 2015, a rightfully elected Greek government organized a referendum rejecting the financial plan of the Troika. Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, gave the following answer: “There can be no democratic choice against European treaties”. The violent remedy was not designed to save (only) the Greeks.
Three centuries before, the sovereign debt appeared as a timely solution to rapidly fund warfare. Public debt, as a particular institution, was a compromise between different social and political groups: the ones who p...