Coming at a time like this, Brexit could have disastrous effects for the European construction. B. On Greece  1. On what went wrong in Greece  Taking over from Athanasios Orphanides and his earlier remarks on what went wrong in Greece, I would like to say a few words on that myself.
The dramatic rise in the unemployment ratio, which almost tripled from 9% in 2008 to 26% today, due to the free-fall in output (more than 25% loss of GDP, comparable only to the US Great Depression of 1929), the dramatic fall in living standards and valuations of assets (real and financial), the accumulation of another mountain of debt (private debt of € billion in just 5 years), the ongoing exclusion from the international capital markets and hence the need for a 3rd Memorandum – currently under way – makes it evident even to the layman that adjustment programmes in the case of Greece have failed, at least so far (Ireland, Cyprus, Portugal all needed only one MoU and recently successfully exited from it).