Such a contract would have transformed the consequences of a slower-than-hoped recovery by limiting or eliminating debt servicing payments in an orderly and pre-agreed way until GDP recovered sufficiently. This too would have accelerated the return of private sector confidence and boosted economic activity.
Servicing of the indebtedness would not in fact have been interrupted and here again the ESM could, depending on the parameterisation of the contract, have cleared a larger profit in a win-win result. This too was floated to an unresponsive ESM and IMF, neither of which had such tools available.