2. If The Economist is too capitalist for you, the current Greek finance minister also thinks (thought?) default would be very bad: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/05/16/weisbrot-and-krugman-ar....
"Does this mean that Greece ought to grin and bear the massive and misanthropic idiocy of the bailout-austerity package imposed upon it by the troika (EU-ECB-IMF)? Of course not. We should certainly default."
Defaulting could lead to further negotiations if Greece stays in the Eurozone, like slashing a big part of a loan handed out when projections showed Greece would not be able to pay it.
Why do you loan to a country when projections show the country can't pay? Is it to keep the country economically enslaved for years?
That's probably why the second-to-top-level comment translated the following as FUD. The gains for Greece from defaulting would be better than accepting the austerity measures.
>For Greece the gains from defaulting would be slight, and
the costs potentially vast.
Translation: FUD.2. This article was written three years ago, when the rest of Europe was in worse shape. It's not clear how a Greek default would affect the rest of the continent right now.
3. I have nothing against a reasoned argument that default is Greece's best remaining option (like yours, thanks!). What I object to is the semantic stopsign "FUD" in response to a situation that is legitimately uncertain and scary.