Carmen Elena Dorobăț at Mises Wire provides some background on the Western European monetary institutions that got Greece to where it is today:

Luckily for Greece, this international monetary order—which was initiated at Genoa, cemented at Bretton Woods, and given full powers after the Smithsonian agreement—is now in place. The British solution of the 1930s has also led to the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions, like the IMF, which have allowed and enabled a reckless Greek administration to get to this point. The advocates of deficit spending have long won the popularity contest—a contest that perhaps Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, is poised to win once more—demonstrating that in the history of monetary matters, little ever changes when it comes to inflation. Now, however, the international monetary order has hit rock bottom, and there is no longer any worse alternative to fall back on. The Eurozone and the world monetary system now live on borrowed time—borrowed, no doubt, from institutions like the IMF.

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