Honestly, the referendum is just a way for Tsipras to get out of being the bad guy to his European counterparts. He was elected by the people to negotiate on their behalf, but they (and I say this as a 3rd party outsider) seem to want only an end to the austerity measures without a firm understanding of the consequences that will bring. He, if he didn't before, at least now knows better. Greece doesn't have any weight to swing around in this arena, and the Eurozone doesn't need them as much as they need the Eurozone.

The bottom line is that Greece owes a lot of people a lot of money that Greece can't pay. The lenders shouldn't have lent the money because it was a bad bet, and they should have negotiated sooner (2009) to cut their losses, but they didn't instead giving them even more money. And now it's crazy. Greeks won't accept austerity, and lenders have finally learned the lesson to stop lending to Greece until they prove they can pay it back, or at least treat their debts to outsiders as more important than the debts that they have promised to their people. If I tell my son I'm taking him to Disneyland, but I can't pay my mortgage, at a certain point it becomes necessary to admit that I can't afford Disneyland or I'll lose my house. My son will dislike me, but I'll have a house to live in.