stop, or he'll shoot himself and you and me and them

what follows is the very definition of the clusterf^%&k.

Greece owes money to banks throughout Europe,
particularly French and German.

These banks are being held together by government money from their own countries, because they're broke and holding toxic paper.
They will take taxpayer money from all over Europe, money which will wave at Greece
as it goes back north, to those banks.

And if Greece defaults, the Euro banks will not necessarily default.
Euro banks took out $129 billion in CDS which were bought by US banks.
So, behind the scenes,

the ECB/EU are holding a gun to Greece's back, saying
"you better do x,y,z or you won't get any money"

Behind that scene,

the US is holding a gun in the back of the ECB, saying
"you better give them Greeks some money"

[sorry, I was raised on westerns and cop shows. Motive = gun]
The IMF is also playing an interesting role, being essentially American
in practice, now that DSK is gone.

[guns pointed in everywhich direction]
Who's gonna drop first?

For a sane review, let's go to a Greek economist: