Greece's ace card: help us or we'll take you all down

Like a slow-motion car crash, all eyes are fixed in horror on the political chaos into which Greece is descending.

So desperate has the nation’s plight become that even economic suicide seems preferable to the austerity European neighbours seem minded, brutally, to impose upon it.

For the birthplace of European civilisation and modern democracy to boot, there could hardly be a more ignominious descent.

If the tax rises, spending cuts and state sell-offs of the ruling government’s medium term financial strategy (MTFS) aren’t approved, then assuming international policymakers are as good as their word, all future IMF/eurozone loans will cease.

In such circumstances, sovereign debt default would follow within days, and government, unable to pay its bills, would grind to a halt.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/8581092/Greeces-ace-card-help-us-or-well-take-you-all-down.html

The only way for Greece to sort out its credit disasters is to exit the euro and return to a heavily devalued drachma. They can go back to images of national leaders of revolution and can pull their own weight.

Talking about weights...

The word drachma is connected to the dirhem weight system of the Ottoman era. In the late Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Turkish درهم), the standard dirhem was 3.207g[1] 400 dirhem equal one okka. The Turkish system of weights and measures was metrified in 1931. The okka was redefined as exactly one kilogram, while the batman became ten okkas (10 kg).

The name drachma is derived from the verb δράσσομαι (drássomai, "to grasp"). It is believed that the same word with the meaning of "handful" or "handle" is found in Linear B tablets of the Mycenean Pylos. Initially a drachma was a fistful (a "grasp") of six oboloí or obeloí (metal sticks, literally "spits") used as a form of currency as early as 1100 BC and being literally a form of "bullion": bronze, copper, or iron ingots denominated by weight.

After Alexander the Great's conquests, the name drachma was used in many of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Middle East, including the Ptolemaic kingdom in Alexandria. The Arabic unit of currency known as dirham (in the Arabic language, درهم), known from pre-Islamic times and afterwards, inherited its name from the drachma or didrachm (δίδραχμον, 2 drachmae). The Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire controlled the Levant and traded with Arabia, circulating the coin there in pre-Islamic times and afterward.Dinar is another currency circulated in the Muslim world but originating with the Romans. The Armenian dram also derives its name from the drachma.

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/2011/06/euro-blues-drachma-dreams.html