It was the dog that didn’t bark. Greece defaults and nothing happens in the markets. There was no contagion, no panic, and no bank meltdowns because it was fully anticipated. For the often maligned Eurozone crisis strategy of ‘kicking the can down the road’, the events were an extraordinary vindication and success because nobody cared when Greece finally did default. Of course, we don’t know what the counterfactual would have been if Greece had defaulted in May 2010 or July 2011 – if banks might have failed or if markets might have frozen. As a result, Eurozone leaders will undoubtedly be subject to an iron law of politics: You never get any credit for avoiding a worse scenario. Meanwhile, many analysts (see for instance Eichengreen 2010 on this site) can now feel vindicated by correctly predicting an eventual Greek default early on.
Πηγή: Voxeu