The creditors are the ones acting without consequence. Essentially, the solution to asset bubbles and debt in Europe has been to abolish risk for multinational banks, by putting all of the debt on the heads of taxpayers in countries along the periphery of the union. In other words, the profits generated by the European Union are internationalized, given to elite bankers no matter how terrible their financial decisions were. The costs of these bad decisions are then nationalized, transferred almost entirely to some insecure country’s taxpayers. First it was Ireland, now it’s Greece.

American conservatives should see this system for generating elite profits and public liabilities for what it is: a recipe for endless asset bubbles, economic pain, and tax increases in less powerful European nations. It is cronyism that rewards the worst actors in finance, and punishes everyone else. It’s everything the Tea Partiers claimed to hate about the Bush bailouts of major American financial institutions.

Conservatives may say that people get the governments they deserve. But the Greeks actually did something that was unthinkable in this country, kicking out both of the major parties that led them into debt-peonage. Syriza was their Tea Party, and like the Tea Party it boasts some grandiose and irresponsible rhetoric, flagrantly breaks Godwin’s law, and is generally unruly.