Writing off, restructuring or refinancing the debt? : the IMF's role in the Greek debt crisis

This paper looks at the recent debt crisis in Greece and argues that the crisis exemplifies a sequence of systematic mistakes made by International Financial Institutions, mistakes whose consequences had been clearly anticipated at the time of the first bail-out and could have been avoided. I will argue that the "original sin" of international creditors has been that of refinancing, rather than partially writing off, the debt. This mistake has led to excessively restrictive policies, and has ultimately to interventions of bail-out/in much larger than those which would have solved the problem at the outset, causing unnecessary pain to the economy and damaging both creditors' and debtors' interests.