WOLFGANG SCHÄUBLE, Germany’s flinty finance minister, summed it up neatly, if inadvertently. “Nobody is forcing anything on Greece,” he told reporters in Brussels. “But the obligations apply.” A day earlier Greek voters, chafing at those same obligations after many years of recession, had elected a government led by the anti-austerity Syriza party. Greece may have brought its problems upon itself. But after five years of control by a foreign “troika”—the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, which have enforced the terms of Greece’s bail-outs—it is not hard to see why some Greeks believe that plenty of nasty things have indeed been forced on them.
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