I don't have a lot of reason to suspect that the European governments don't express the will of the people. It doesn't mean that everyone is always happy with every decision made by those governments, but the governments are formed via elections and a reasonably fair political process. Nor does it mean that the government makes good choices. As an example, consider in the US where polls consistently show support for cutting taxes, additional social spending, and reducing the deficit. What's a politician to do? With regards to Greece, I don't see what good options they had. The state of affairs couldn't continue. Greece had reached deficits that could no longer be supported by their current GDP and tax revenues. There are really two options: leave the Euro and default - which means capital flight and a lack of investment - or radical austerity measures which leads to structural unemployment. Either option leads to suffering for the people. I work for a US subsidiary of an Italian company. I met with one of the Italian controllers for dinner not too long ago. His comment to me was "David, the next generation is paying for the political incompetence and comfort of this generation" I'm not sure that anything can be done to correct this problem now - to fix it, we'd have to go back fifteen or twenty years in time