http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article7026276.ece

What happens next?

Best-case scenario Reassurances from other EU countries that they are ready to help Greece calm the financial markets, buying time for the government in Athens to start cutting its budget deficit. Investors are happy to buy Greek government bonds, knowing that France and Germany are standing behind them. Rather than spreading to Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland, the crisis is contained to Greece. The return of growth in the EU eases fears of a prolonged slump and concerns about the financial health of Europe’s banks.

Worst-case scenario Greece is the trigger for a so-called sovereign debt crisis that is every bit as bad as the turbulence caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the American investment bank, in September 2008. Fears that countries will default on their debts spread to other eurozone economies, notably Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland, but also to Britain, America and Japan. The crisis causes a second damaging downward leg to the global recession, more serious this time because governments and central banks would no longer have the ammunition to head it off. The spectre of a second Great Depression looms once more.