> Honestly Greece needs to default if only for their citizens to have to own up to the mess their politicians have made and continue to make.

That's not the whole story. The reason Greece is where it is today is because of the cruel austerity package imposed upon them by their European creditors. Here's a chart of their GDP: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/gdp

Now of course there are other reasons as well - Greek manufacturing is non-existent, partly because they outsourced their manufacturing to Europe, who went to Greece en-masse for vacations, but then didn't when the global financial crisis hit.

And of course, having an integrated currency but separate government structures isn't the best idea when you have multiple economies that are at disparate levels of wealth. In an ideal world, Greece would have been able to manage their currency and exchange levels (ie. print money), but of course they couldn't.

As part of the EU, Greece essentially got the worst of both worlds - high import costs, lower (relative) income from tourism. And no control over their own currency. And to make matters worse, they got shit treatment from their creditors - their GDP has plunged since the onset of austerity measures, as has government income.

While perhaps Greece could have done more, they did what they were expected to as part of the EU, and it backfired horribly. Now they're finally doing what needs to be done, and the EU cries foul...