Regarding your essay:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/20/everything-you-need-to-know-about-why-greece-might-leave-the-euro/
Call this wise cracking merde about a serious subject! Or call it a breezy, mocking political travelogue: didn’t Milton Friedman say I can look with equanimity on the misfortunes of others? The Financial Times has done a better job of fear mongering, as the Guardians of Neo-Liberal Rationalism. And by all means don’t mention the co-conspirators, with a former Greek government to coverup the true extent of Greek debt, Goldman Sachs, like a good corporate lap dog!  Your just a pretender, an instrument of Mr. Bezos’ attempt to rescue the grey Post from it’s stodgy reactionary readership, and the predations of Katharine Weymouth.
Your style, an amalgam of Luce’s Time Magazine pablum, you recall Hank’s American Century? And the un-mourned stylistic pizazz of Helen Girley Brown, with just a touch of Arianna Huffington’s ersatz ‘Progressivism’. The rumor is that McDonalds will offer your essay as a two page coloring books, with a set of crayons, and a discount coupon from Amazon, for a week’s supply of Soma, you recall it from Huxley’s Brave New World? Mr. Bezos is nothing if not a marketing genius, comparable to Edward Bernays?
Sincerely yours,
Myra B.

On the question of the IMF, we have an answer from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Headline:

IMF has betrayed its mission in Greece, captive to EMU creditors

Sub-headline:

The IMF’s Original Sin in Greece was to let Dominique Strauss-Kahn hijack the institution to save Europe’s banks and the euro when the crisis erupted, dooming Greece to disaster.

Mrs Lagarde must stop playing the role of a diplomat. She must take off her European hat and speak instead for the organisation she leads and for the world.

She must confront the EMU creditors head on and in public. She must tell them, in blunt language, that they share much of the blame for the current impasse.

She must make it clear to them that Greece needs sweeping debt relief – as a matter of economic science, whatever the morality – and that the refusal of the creditors to face up to this elemental fact is now the chief impediment to a solution. And she should tell them that the IMF will no longer play any part in their deceitful charade.

If she does not do so, and if the lack of leadership by Europe’s political class leads to a catastrophic denouement on every level, then let it be on her head too.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11654639/IMF-has-betrayed-its-mission-in-Greece-captive-to-EMU-creditors.html

‘Previous rescue attempts provide a lamentable example. The first, in 2010, allowed no space for debt forgiveness. Instead, over €200bn was invested in making Greece’s creditors whole. Athens avoided default but its economy gained no relief. The austerity insisted upon by its creditors drained demand from an economy already in freefall.’

An answer from James K.Galbraith:

Headline:

Bad Faith. Why Real Debt Relief Is Not On The Table For Greece

The original crime in the Greek affair, Legrain said, was committed in May 2010, when it became clear that the country was insolvent. At that time, the IMF staff was convinced that Greek debts must be restructured, and that debt relief was not only necessary but also just, given that reckless borrowers are always matched to reckless lenders, and that lenders are compensated, in part, for the risk of loss.

Restructuring did not happen. Instead, a trio of Frenchmen — at the IMF, at the European Central Bank and at the Elysée, and backed by Angela Merkel — decided to pretend that Greece’s problem was merely temporary, that there was a larger financial crisis to be warded off, and that the largest bailout in history should be directed not to save Greece, but to off-load the exposure of French and German banks onto all the European states, with Germany’s taxpayers taking the largest share.

Why did the IMF get into the act, making its largest loan in history (32 times Greece’s quota) over the reservations of its staff and the objections of many non-European members? Because the Managing Director at the time, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, wanted to become President of France.

At the same time, the European Central Bank under Jean-Claude Trichet bought up some 27 billion euros in Greek bonds, thereby raising their price. Why did Trichet do this? To support the original lenders, once again in large part the French banks.

In so doing, the European powers were able to avoid imposing losses on the large banks. And by his actions, Trichet locked the ECB into a refusal to accept losses on Greek bonds as he stretched, if not broke, the legal mandate of the European Central Bank.

http://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/06/bad-faith-why-real-debt-relief-is-not-on-the-table-for-greece/

Headline:

The time has come for Tsipras to accept the deal from Europe

Sub-headline:

The offer from Greece’s creditors is better than the alternative

After all the usual FT agitprop, carefully disguised as neoliberal rationalism/apologetics we are left with this act of public shaming, redolent of the old school tie:

‘Without friends or finance, the Greek prime minister is left with just three possible cards to play: one technical, a second principled and the last utterly dishonourable.’

StephenKMackSD

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ab4be6da-15a0-11e5-8e6a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3dQDmHp3u

Headline:

‘Time to concede with honour and end crisis’

Sub-headline:

‘Grexit is a soluble problem merely cloaked in an aura of impossibility’

The Greeks have the temerity to challenge the neo-liberal rationalism of Austerity and to declare that they wish to remain in the EU. But to moderate the Greek bailout would be an admission of it’s unworkability, of it’s utterly draconian character. Even Martin Wolf’s essay brims with a kind of anguish, not to speak of hand wringing, while still maintaining his Neo-Liberal piety.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a614c36c-141f-11e5-9bc5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3dKbDFy7T

What the editors of The Financial Times ask for is a noble surrender of the Greeks, Mr Tsipras,  Mr. Varoufakis and Syriza. Yet this essay is awash in the rhetoric of the self-exculpatory i.e. of a declaration of the ‘we are blameless’, from an organization that has championed, apologized for the ascent of that neo-liberal rationalism, and it’s motley assortment of political/economic actors. Call it disingenuous, there are stronger words!

The questions abound: What does the future hold? Will Mr. Jack Lew intervene, on behalf of President Obama and the American National Security State, to counter a possible move by the rapacious Mr. Putin? To express it New Cold War paranoia terms. The Financial Times’ call for surrender is not an invitation to negotiate.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ac17b378-141a-11e5-abda-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3dKbDFy7T

Political Cynic

Lawrence Summers tells us on May 17,2015 that ‘Reform-minded Ukraine merits debt reduction’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ff3634fc-fa44-11e4-a41c-00144feab7de.html#axzz3cwwSYOV5

Before this on January 26, 2015 the FT publishes this ‘News story’ titled ‘IMF pressed to increase lending to Ukraine’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/26cbe0b2-a413-11e4-b01e-00144feab7de.html#axzz3cwwSYOV5

Again we read this ‘News story’ ‘Greece defies creditors’ demands for decisions on reform’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0c45e4ee-10d9-11e5-8413-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3cxkeA0z6

While Rome burns, there is this from Forbes dated June 14, 2015  by Tim Worstall titled

‘Finland’s Problem Is The Same As Greece’s; Neither Should Be In The Euro As Krugman Says’

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/06/14/finlands-problem-is-the-same-as-greeces-neither-should-be-in-the-euro-as-krugman-says/

Should this be an indication of where the EU is headed? And need we wait to see the entrance of Spain’s Podemos into the melodrama, to see that the fissuring of the EU is upon us? While the pseudo-economists, political romantics, and neoliberal rationalists converge, in this publication, in their savaging of the Greeks and their utter lack of Corporatist Virtue?

Political Observer

Here is the crux of the matter according to Lexington on ‘Obama’s agenda in the balance’, after Mr. Shakespeare’s Drawbridge nonsense, which simply demonstrates lazy thinking, and or political desperation, which grabs ahold of the latest intellectual gimmick:

‘… a majority of Mr Obama’s own party bowed to those voters who think that increased trade with Asia is something to fear, and that working Americans cannot trust their government to put their interests ahead of those of big corporations.’

This quote is an utter political distortion in service to the Corporatist Agenda that The Economist is advocate/apologist for! I tweeted my congressman Rep. Scott Peters numerous times before the vote. What sane political actor votes for ‘secret law’? That will remain secret for five years? Even the congresspeople, who might take the opportunity to view the pertinent documents, are constrained by law not to take notes, or to discuss what they have viewed with anyone! Surely one of the writers/editors at The Economist must recall Mr. Jean-Francois Revel’s famous polemics: ‘The Totalitarian Temptation’ of 1976 or How Democracies Perish of 1983? I still have my copies. Is there no one at this publication with even a modicum of historical memory?

We can thank WikiLeaks as reported in the New Republic for some very valuable information on these ‘trade deals’ and what they actually are.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121967/whats-really-going-trade-services-agreement

But wait, here come the real culprits, call them the ‘usual suspects’ in The Economist’s world view :

But regardless of what members of Congress believe personally, trade unions and left-wing grassroots campaign groups have done an effective job of intimidating House Democrats into a defensive crouch on trade, threatening to punish members who defy them by withholding campaign funds and help from grassroots activists.

Union bosses, populist Democrats and some populist Republicans crowed with triumph after Friday’s votes, saying that TPA had to be stopped to prevent more jobs from being outsourced to Asia, and—in the words of Richard Trumka, the president of the vast AFL-CIO union—to “send a message that our government belongs not to the highest corporate bidders but to the working people who make our country run.”

At The Economist it is perpetually 1952 in America! It’s hard to be patient with the rest of the essay’s meander through the thickets of American politics. But never fear the Chinese and their exploitation of America’s democratic weakness is  ever present! Another thought: it is arresting to think that the political magpie Ross Perot was right about NAFTA, and that the perpetually priapic Bill Clinton was it’s front man. But to think that stolid Neo-Liberal Obama is finished with ‘Trade Deals’ is hopelessly naive!

Political Cynic

After the provocative, even taunting essay titled ‘Greeks chose poverty, let them have their way’ at the Financial Times of June 9, 2015 by technocrat Francesco Giavazzi. And Anatole Kaletsky’s essay of June 11,2015, ominously titled ‘A Greek suicide?’ that assures the reader that the Greek default, as a blackmail tactic of Syriza, will not be effective at Project Syndicate:

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greek-default-political-suicide-by-anatole-kaletsky-2015-06

We are back to the old reliable, with this report from The Financial Times of June 12,2015 by Peter Spiegel in Brussels and Michael Hunter in London, under the headline ‘Greece defies creditor’ demands for decisions on reform’: I can see the news boys in caps, plus fours and argyle knee socks, proclaiming this headline at the top of their voices, above the traffic noise, circa 1926!

Back is the screeching hysteria and resort to political/economic melodrama, that is about to reach it’s denouement. Except that it has been a series of those denouements, from the very beginning of the ‘Crisis’. The future of the EU hangs in the balance, why even American technocrat Mr. Lew has expressed deep concern about an ‘accident’! The Neo-Liberal order experiences a rift that could become a lasting feature? The possibility of permanent ‘crisis’ endangers the whole of the endeavor begun by the eminence grise of the EU Jean Monnet?

But not to forget the Yanis Varoufakis’ transcript of a speech at the Social Europe web site, published on June 11, 2015. Mr. Varoufakis’ transcript is well worth your time and consideration.

Political Observer

‘If you were in charge of NBC News and Williams were caught telling exaggerated or made-up stories on your watch, what would you do?
I would do what Roger Ailes would do. Through Roger’s eyes, the issue is: What does my audience want? So, why should I have to run my business on the basis of what media people say I should do — people who don’t want me to succeed?’
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/magazine/michael-wolff-thinks-we-could-all-learn-from-fox-news.html?_r=0

Mr. Wolff is a Murdoch biographer and sycophant! He defines journalism according to Roger Ailes as ‘What does my audience want?’ This rhetorical gambit takes the onus off Mr. Wolff, as if he were ‘reporting’ on the Ailes comment, instead of assenting to the wisdom of a carefully manipulated crowd: The ‘News’ as the product of carefully massaged propaganda, that takes as it’s purpose mendacity and the malicious, as tools against the predations of ‘Liberalism’ as re-imagined by Ailes and company. Fair and balanced? Or just call it an exercise in careerist cynicism?

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2bc11fe8-0dd5-11e5-9a65-00144feabdc0.html?hubRefSrc=email&utm_source=lfemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=lfnotification#lf_comment=326599569

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/speech-of-hope-for-greece-by-yanis-varoufakis-2015-06

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/07/investing/argentina-economy-stocks/

‘ Argentina’s Merval stock market is up 45% this year, more than Europe’s stellar performance and way more than the S&P 500.
Even everyday Argentines, battered by rising food prices and electric bills, are feeling better lately. The country’s consumer confidence index is up over 40% from a year ago, according to Torcuato di Tella University, a private university in Buenos Aires. ‘

Prof. Francesco Giavazzi’s essay is full of hyperbole, that first demonstrates a certain ignorance of  American politics in this :

‘Imagine President Barack Obama taking part in high-level talks for months on end, where little was on the agenda except the state of Tennessee.’

One can easily imagine the president focusing his attention on Tennessee, although not to the exclusion of all other concerns, that isn’t even realistic! Or this bit of respectable bourgeois political chatter that reflects the political orthodoxy of the moment.

 The jihadis of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) represent a new and serious threat to the west, as does Mr Putin’s revanchism.

This melodramatic frame puts the Greeks, ‘… a country that represents 1.8 per cent of the eurozone’s economic output.’ , into proper perspective?  Putin and Isis are at the Gates, sounds like a riff on the warmed over political hysteria of Niall Ferguson. Except that we can trace the rise of militant Islam and ‘Putin’s revanchism’ to American and European political adventurism: the as if operating here is self willed blindness or self-serving dishonesty! The professor’s rather obtuse argument, such as it is, is that the E.U. must let the Greeks fend for themselves, even at the high cost of the ‘Grexit’. The Greeks refuse to give up their utterly corrupt welfare state, led by  Syriza, they are like Ireland and Slovenia, not worth the money spent on the rescue attempt!

The rescue of the Germans four times in the 20th Century, from the 20’s to the early 50’s, doesn’t even figure in Prof. Giavazzi’s argument. In fact the Germans look like the deadbeats he accuses the Greeks of being! I know, as Henry Ford opined history is bunk!  It’s a question of Neo-Liberal cynicism: the near panic of the possibility of the fissuring  E.U. has been the idee fixe of the financial press for years. Have the Neo-Liberals conceded that the Greeks will exit? And is Prof. Giavazzi’s essay the fist of many such essays? Yet the question remains who will be next? Spain led by the Anti-Austerity Podemos? In the end, will the E.U. eventually be made up of that mythical virtuous Northern Tier alone?

Political Observer

The first of these essays dated June 6,2015 is titled Chronicle of a struggle in which quite surprisingly Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Mr Tsipras literary contribution to the debate, followed by the Oxbridger’s literary contribution of Joseph K. of Kafka’s The Trial and Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, play a large part in the rhetorical framing of more Economist hectoring, even bulling tone! The attacks on the Greeks at The Economist has been nothing but relentless, the betrayal of Capitalism, in it’s Corporatist iteration of the E.U., is not to be excused, much less countenanced. The promise of financial ruin and the human suffering that accompanies it is an effective cudgel.

The rules by which this game is played, one-upmanship, of this educated elite is from Stephen Potter’s The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating, published in 1947: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Potter

And one-upmanship here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-upmanship

To say the least the British are adroit practitioners of this game, they’ve mastered it’s techniques for almost two generations! Two Kafka’s trumps one Hemingway!

The second of these essays, dated June 8,2015, is, again, at the Economist, melodramatically titled ‘Dancing on a volcano‘. Not even two whole days have elapsed before readers are again confronted with Greeks, in their role as the epitome of the mendacious. The Economist engages in tiresome Red Bating as if it were 1952 in America, as a sop to their Conservative readership. The first paragraph of the essay tells the whole story, the rest mere agitprop:

Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s prime minister, knows that time is running short for his country to reach a deal with its creditors. This makes it all the more remarkable that, on June 5th, he made a speech in parliament denouncing the creditors’ latest set of proposals. Mr Tsipras stated that “there isn’t a specific deadline for an agreement”. The country’s bail-out monitors (the European Commission , the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank) are growing impatient with the Greek government’s delaying tactics—most recently postponing a €300m ($337m) debt payment to the IMF, then missing a deadline for presenting a revised set of negotiating proposals to Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission president. It may be politically necessary for Mr Tsipras to demonstrate his independence from Greece’s creditors and postpone a deal until the last minute, but he is taking his country frighteningly close to the edge.

Then we come to an essay at The Guardian, dated June 9,2015 by Syriza party member and economist Costas Lapavitsas, titled If the eurozone thinks Greece can be blackmailed,it is wrong . The sub-headline is revelatory:

Greece’s creditors do not have the country’s best interests at heart. Syriza, which still has enormous popular support, will not be afraid to examine the alternatives

Mr. Lapavitsas makes his position abundantly clear in his two concluding paragraphs:

The economy, meanwhile, is again moving toward recession, liquidity is extremely short, the public sector is delaying domestic payments and deposits are draining away from banks. Above all, the country cannot meet its debt payments this summer. Crisis is truly upon us.

The only political force that could lead Greece out of this quagmire remains Syriza, which still enjoys enormous popular support. If the lenders prove intransigent, the government should examine all alternative paths. Those who think the country will submit to blackmail because it does not know how to handle the alternative are wrong. Greece can and will survive.

The fate of the E.U. , Monnet’s conception/execution now thoroughly colonized, and or the harbinger of Neo-Liberalism, i.e. the euro as the end of Keynesian economic interventionism by sovereign nations controlling their own currency. Or the E.U. effectively controlled by Germany, bailed out four times in the 20th Century that refuses to grant economic largess to Greece. Is Mr. Lapavitsas bluffing?

On the question of the euro as bulwark against Keynesian interventionism:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/26/robert-mundell-evil-genius-euro?CMP=share_btn_tw

On German bailout in 20th Century see:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/927efd1e-9c32-11e4-b9f8-00144feabdc0.html

Almost Marx