How do you feel about the referendum that Tsipras has proposed? I think it's terribly misguided. For better or worse, the government was elected to negotiate on behalf of the people. The people aren't policy experts and have had no say in the negotiations. It seems irresponsible to me to make them the arbiters of where this saga is going to end up. Of course, there is an argument that the people should have the ultimate say, but to me this decision feels more like a way for the government to wash their hands of the consequences of a bad decision.However, the Greek people are not making this easy on the politicians and financiers, and it's not their job to, but it will be their consequence to live with.
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.