When the unthinkable becomes inevitable…

As the Greek crisis develops and spreads, threatening to become a Europe-wide sovereign debt crisis, I thought the following line from The Economist‘s editorial on the matter (‘Acropolis now’, 1 May 2010) is worth noting:

When the unthinkable suddenly becomes the inevitable, without pausing in the realm of the improbable, then you have contagion.

Another piece in the same issue is entitled ‘The cracks spread and widen’, which reminds me of John Holloway’s new book Crack Capitalism. One of the reasons financial investors are unwilling to purchase Greek debt — now rated below ‘investment grade’, i.e. ‘junk’ — is because they fear ‘Greece will not be able to stomach the programme of budgetary and economic reform which the IMF is due to set out in early May, and on which the euro-zone rescue funds will depend’. The Economist is talking about struggle.