Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said he overestimated the Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) government of Greece, speaking on CNN during a discussion on how a Grexit would impact the EU.

Krugman had assumed that the SYRIZA government had an exit plan from the euro, stressing that it “didn’t even occur to me that they would be prepared to make a stand without having done any contingency planning … amazingly – they thought they could simply demand better terms without having any backup plan. So, certainly this is a shock. But, you know, in some sense, it’s hopeless in any case. …it’s not as if the terms that they were being offered before were feasible. I mean, the new terms are even worse, but the terms they were being offered before were still not going to work. So I, you know, I may have overestimated the competence of the Greek government.”

Though he states that nothing can be certain, Krugman believes that in the end Greece will either (a) get debt relief, or (b) exit from the EU one way or another.

He said that a Grexit would probably result in Greece’s recovery, although he wasn’t asked how many … generations this would take.

Following the third bailout, he believes that nothing has changed in the strategy that isn’t working so all that has happened is a postponement for later tragedy.

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