Personally, I think this is a huge cop out. The common people of Greece, who are the ones suffering, aren't policy experts. These are difficult decisions that should be made by the people who were elected to make them.
The Greek people voting is what put the politicians that have caused this mess in power. Any common citizen will be inclined towards a populist politician in the 80s and 90s who will promise them better pensions and easier lives.
Now, after years of a whole society blaming the Troika of their struggles, they have the option to either vote to accept a bailout and have more austerity, or vote to stick it to the banks and Europe. I have a feeling a lot of people will use this opportunity as a way to stick it to the man.
Also, I can't believe how short sighted some people are about the current situation. Yes it sucks, and yes the IMF and Germany aren't being super helpful, but it's not like they put Greece in that position in the first place. And German politicians have their own constituency to be responsible too. This is a culmination of decades of bad policy and mismanagement of a country by politicians who have failed to enact any meaningful reform, but the evil IMF is the one at fault here. Oh boy :(
I am so glad that my home country has not abused the advantage of lower interest rates on loans now that they are also an Eurozone member. I would hate to have to try and explain to my grandfather why voting for that guy who is promising to cut taxes and increase pensions is a bad idea.
EDIT: sorry if anyone got 20 notifications for this. I kept getting a 500 error and after I finally managed a successful post I saw 8 or so posts from me. Sorry!
There is a bit of blame to be placed on the private investors which funded Greece's deficit spending for years and years at ridiculous rates (within 6 basis points of Germany's bonds at one point). And then also there is something to be said for the ECB trying to bail out private investors unwilling to accept a loss or even a discount on their junk bonds that they paid A prices for.
But yeah, Greece is not acting as if they respect the reality of the situation here. Instead of austerity and a path back to prosperity, they're going to take severe depression, exclusion from the Eurozone, government shutdown of services due to lack of funds, and a longer path to prosperity.
Hopefully the rest of the world will see this as a model for how dangerous it is to take on mountains of debt under the auspices of future growth.