Friends, Europeans, and Countrymen, Who Really Did Win Last Sunday's Greek Referendum?

I feel as if I’m standing at the bedside of my critically ill best friend near the moment of truth.  Wondering, as I pray, if tomorrow will yield regained health or bitter mourning.

Very late Thursday night, with the help of the French, Greece put forth a new proposal showing serious movement on its part toward meeting the demands of its creditors for a third bailout, this one seeking $60 billion.  Today (Saturday) nineteen EU Finance Ministers (the Eurogroup) will assess that proposal in advance of Sunday’s meeting by the heads of all EU member nations on the fate of Greece in the euro.  

Greece's New Finance Minister

Despite the extraordinary movement shown by Greece’s proposal—so much so that it has many wondering whether NAI, not OXI, supporters won last Sunday’s Referendum—there is still a rocky road to salvation.  Many simply do not trust Greece to implement its proposals, and there are yet individual EU member nations’ parliaments left to agree to a third bailout.

As reported by Reuters early Friday, a positive Eurozone summit on Sunday could initiate negotiations with Athens on a new three-year bailout program and bring about the release of urgently needed bridging funds once Greece enacts key immediate reforms.

To me the alternative to working all this out is too horrid to contemplate…though some journalists have tried.

So, to express my feelings on the situation, I’ve taken the liberty of composing a little ditty that some of you might see as faintly resembling words once spoken by Mark Anthony—no, not the singer, the one made famous by the Bard in Julius Caesar:

Marlon Brando as Mark Anthony

Friends, Europeans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to unbury Hellas, not to praise it.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Hellas. The noble Critic

Hath told you Hellas was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Hellas answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Critic and the rest–

For Critic is an honourable soul;

So are they all, all honourable souls–

Come I to speak at Hellas’s near funeral.

Hellas was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Critic says Hellas was ambitious;

And Critic is an honourable soul.

Hellas hath brought much greatness to Europe

Whose presence did the general well-being fill:

Did this in Hellas seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Hellas hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Critic says Hellas was ambitious;

And Critic is an honourable soul.

You all did see that in Parliament

Was thrice presented Hellas a bailout crown,

Which Hellas did not once refuse: was this ambition?

Yet Critic says Hellas was ambitious;

And, sure, Critic is an honourable soul.

I speak not to disprove what Critic spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love Hellas once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for Hellas?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Hellas,

And I must pause till it come back to me,

Beside Hellas bright and alive once more.

Pray harder, folks, Sunday is almost upon us.

Jeff—Saturday