Greece has failed, or refused, to make a ¤1.6-billion payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is therefore now in default.

In addition to this unfortunate action, Prime Minister Tsipras has decided not to accept the latest bailout plan and, in an unexpected move, opted to put the latest rescue plan to a referendum in a week’s time. He knows that the Greece people, exhausted by severe austerity, will reject the offer of creditors and he hopes this will strengthen his political position for the fallout which is inevitable if the plan is rejected.

A strong vote for the rejection of the latest bailout plan is an attempt at brinksmanship which will not sway creditors, as evidenced by the fact that there has not been a panic in financial markets. Meanwhile, the beleaguered Greek Government has had to close banks for a week, limit withdrawals from ATMs, restrict overseas business settlements and impose capital controls.

A default and exit from the euro currency union aka ‘Grexit’ is not likely to trigger a contagion that would destroy the euro or cripple the banks in the way that it would less than five years ago when the magnitude of Greece’s debt crisis became known.

They have been making provisions and the European Central Bank and national governments have taken action to protect the European banking system. Nobody wants to have this experience if it can be avoided and the fallout would make the Greek situation even worse.

Greece is a small country of no particular strategic importance. The country will see an escalation of the haemorrhage of technical and managerial expertise, the thriving foreign exchange “black market” will expand, there will be more capital flight and international trade credit will dry up. The country is already seen as a tourism bargain basement.

Apart from watching the histrionics of a living Greek tragedy of self-inflicted economic wounds, we in Jamaica must ponder what impact a definitive Greek default will have on Jamaica as we suggested Monday.

A Greek default would create a temporary hiatus in lending to emerging markets and rates of interest for borrowing in international capital markets would go up. This will make it more difficult and more expensive for Jamaica to borrow, which it has to do in this fiscal year.

Hopefully, Dr Peter Phillips’s road show in the US and Europe has already secured what our Government needs. If any country deserves the benefit of the doubt it is Jamaica.

While Jamaica has implemented an IMF programme unprecedented in its austerity and received public endorsements by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, the Greek tragedy will not give the IMF and recalcitrant World Bank cause to soften their approach.

In any case, Jamaica is of no strategic importance to anyone and is too small to have an impact on the international financial markets. Also banish the thought that Jamaica could capitalise on ‘Grexit’ by pursuing a strategy of hanging tough, given that its only significance to the international community is to be held up as an example, especially to the Caribbean, that an orthodox adjustment programme is economically and politically feasible.

What the two extreme approaches to debt crisis, namely Jamaica — good behaviour — and Greece — bad behaviour — prove is that it is the creditors who need to learn and change, not the debtors.