If you had asked the Troika – the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – back in November 2010 what they thought would happen to Greece if it missed its programmed target for 2016 nominal gross domestic product (GDP) by 10%, they would have been very disappointed. They would also have recognised the problems it would cause for Greece in terms of achieving programme implementation and maintaining political support for the programme.
Greece has actually revised down 2016 projections by a mind-blowing 36%, a drop that many back in 2010 might have seen as sufficient to incite a revolution. Alexis Tsipras, Greece's hard-left leader with a soft centre, could therefore be construed as the Troika “getting away with it”. After all, it is reasonable to view the Troika as, if not actually giving birth to ruling party Syriza, then fostering its incredible rise via insistence on relentlessly unsustainable debt policies.
