(The ) resembles a fine riverboat that was launched on a still ocean in 2000. And then the first storm that hit it, in 2008, started creating serious… - Yanis Varoufakis

They [the Chinese] are immensely self-serving, as they would. But a the same time they have a quality that we need in Southern Europe. Actually, I think everyone needs to have foreign direct investment by patient inverstors. They are patient investors. They don't come in to grab an asset for speculative purposes. They come in order to create a base on which to build and build and build. And their horizon is 20-30 years. What Europe has not done with Greece is to do what the Chinese were prepared to do to come there with their workers, with their engineers, and actully do some serious work.

Our view — that we’re not going to leave, and it’s up for the German government to leave, or to throw us out — is harder for them to deal with. The regime despised us because we neither want Grexit nor fear it. Our call unilaterally to implement perfectly moderate policies without fear or passion destabilized them. It was a danger to their system because of its widespread appeal....But things are also changing. In recent weeks, we have built strength among the trade unions, for instance among the electricity workers. They were betrayed by Syriza, who broke up and privatized the public energy company.... the cleaning workers in the public sector... bore the brunt of the troika’s assault against the poor...Social movements... need a political organization that allows them a voice beyond their specific localities... one that doesn’t dominate them. If they don’t have this, then they will be crushed by a new right-wing regime of a resurgent oligarchic right – one founded on.. the state of debt bondage until 2060 agreed with the creditors by Syriza...
Consider this, for instance: Syriza sold the railways for €43 million... they’d have got more money tearing up the rails and selling them as scrap metal. Or take gambling — Syriza enabled the deployment of thirty-five thousand poker machines by a private company, exploiting a bankrupt people with the fake promise of easy winnings. Even the Right’s privatizations were less deplorable than Syriza’s.

Unfortunately the euro's design has created a vicious cycle between failed institutions that create failed policies that lead to discontent and then the only way the powers-that-be in Brussels can clamp down and continue to impose their authority is through increasing degrees of authoritarianism.