Quote from Ed Breen:
That's the thing about having loaned money that can't be paid back and that has no collateral that can be used to make a recovery. At some point you have to admit there is no hope with debt restructuring; you have to admit that the money is lost, and you have to write it off...no matter what you want to do. 'A rock and a hard place' is just a cliche that describes the situation where you have to make the best of bad choices for your self.
One choice lets the Greeks take the loss and put it behind them with a way to move forward, and it makes the Northern Euro banks take huge write downs. Another choice keeps squeezing the Greek people with no real plan for recovery, a kind of debt slavery, and alows the Northern banks to pretend the money does not need to be written off. What you choose depends on where you sit. In any case the money is gone, everyone needs to deal with that and try to move on with a growth strategy; otherwise it will just get worse.