In 2014, a Bank of England report titled: "Money Creation in the Modern Economy" finally admitted what has been known by many for a long time: that 97% of the money supply is now created by banks when they make loans. Most of that money is, and remains throughout its life cycle, digital rather than 'physical' paper money.
The second thing you have to first understand is that nation states are more like corporations and their populations are treated as employees of that corporation. The directors of the corporation are banks and bankers.
As the 'directors' of the corporation/nation, bankers take employees'/citizens' expendable income and gamble with (invest) it on the international market, promising, but not always delivering, a profit to the employees/citizens, but ensuring to always make a profit for themselves. Note, private banks sometimes do this with the explicit consent of the employees/citizens, but mostly they do it without their consent to generate profits for themselves.
Starting around 2001 at the beginning of the Euro era, banks in many EU states began to aggressively push loans on people who could not really afford them. In our rampantly consumerist society, poorer people are more likely to accept offers of money to buy things they don't really need, and bankers know it. Of course, in the case of mortgages or 'remortgages' and car loans, the house and the car are often used to secure the loan.
Bankers did this because banks can only "create money" by loaning money to citizens. Of course, this is a patently ridiculous idea that hides the actual truth: that what is "created" is debt, and that debt is secured by the possessions and "sweat equity" of the citizens. That's why when banks "go broke", the "bail out" they receive from public funds always translates to ordinary people having to work harder for less and/or losing their possessions. Many citizens end up committing suicide as a result, which I suppose could be seen as the most extreme example of equity transference.
Among other indices, the level of success enjoyed by bankers' investing (gambling with) citizens' salaries and the likelihood that the citizens will be able to pay back their loans, determine whether or not a nation state/corporation is a good or bad investment for other international financial investment institutions and individuals. These buy 'stock' in the nation state in the form of government bonds with the government promising to repay with interest at a later date. Whether or not the investor will ultimately be repaid is based on the 'economic health' of the nation state/corporation at any given time.
But bankers were not content with merely gambling with citizens' actual disposable income. They also came up with the wonderful idea of trading the debts that citizens held with the banks. But many of those debts were for mortgages and other loans that had been pushed on people who were very unlikely to be able to pay them back. So who would in their right mind buy such dodgy assets? The solution lay in the ingenious idea of simply lying about the rating of the loans. With a few strokes of a pen or keyboard, bundles of mortgages that were effectively toxic debt became 'high grade' debt. In a perfect example of the fundamentals of fractional reserve banking, a pile of worthless paper became gold!
As was completely foreseeable, when the music stopped on this farcical money-go-round, a lot of banks were left 'holding the baby'. They held loans worth nothing for which they had paid good money. Whose money? Your money! Greek people's money! Irish people's money, etc. After all, that's what's mostly in banks. But where did the money go? For sure, certain banks and high level investors made out like bandits, because that's what they are, but most of the money appears to have just 'disappeared'. It was taken out of the global market and replaced with a decrease in the living standards of millions of people.
But it gets worse. Even though it was now acknowledged that the mortgages and other loans given to hundreds of millions of citizens would never be repaid and would have to be written off, as far as the bankers were concerned, the debt was still owed by the citizens who held it, so citizens' possessions, like the cars and houses that secured those loans, were repossessed by the banks.
But it doesn't end there. The fact that many banks were now technically insolvent, having gambled with and lost the people's money, decreased the overall financial health of the country in question, and all those investors that had bought government bonds in that country/corporation were concerned about getting their bond money back. But there was no money because the bankers had "lost" it! The only solution was to 'recapitalize' the banks by ploughing billions into them. Where did that money come from?
In the case of Europe, primarily from the institutions like the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with the ECB and other EU financial bodies contributing the lion's share. But where did the ECB et al. get the money? From European taxpayers!
But the ECB and IMF weren't about to give Europeans their own money back without extracting their pound of flesh. To "save the banks" they demanded that the national government of the country "in crisis" pass laws that would effectively make the people pay (again) by effectively funding the bank bailout through reducing pensions, public worker salaries, social welfare payments, spending on healthcare and general spending on things that improve people's lives and allow them to live with some dignity. In many cases, nations were also ordered to sell off public services to private corporations, increasing the cost of basic services like water, electricity, public transport, etc.
Getting back to Greece specifically; by 2008 and the "global financial crisis", Greek banks, like most others, had been engaging in this reckless gambling with other people's money for years. Due to the size of the Greek economy, its natural resources and the fact that it isn't a major financial 'partner' in the EU, Greek banks lost more of their shirts than most others. Ireland was in a similar sinking boat along with Spain and Portugal. So Greek banks needed "recapitalization" (bailouts) and they got them from the IMF and ECB.
In the last 5 years "Greece" got €240 billion in bailouts, most of the money coming from European taxes. But about 90% of that €240 billion went right back to large international "banking houses" and other financial institutions who had both recklessly loaned to, and invested in, the Greek state. The other 10% went to the Greek government to keep the country running, i.e. paying the salaries of doctors, teachers, etc.
So over the past few months the Greek people have been told that the bailouts that they didn't actually receive must be repaid by them in the form of raising taxes, cutting pensions, salaries, social welfare payments, privatization, etc.
As of this writing, the Greek government appears to have capitulated to the demands from 'creditors' that, while the Greek people may still hold to quaint notions like 'democracy', the reality is that they, like 99% of the population of the planet, are little more than assets to be exploited, 'consumed' and eventually discarded when no more 'capital' can be squeezed from them.
On the positive side, at least the Greek government tried to represent the best interests of the Greek people, and made the effort to allow them to voice their disgust at such treatment. The Brits, on the other hand, had precisely the same kind of "austerity measures" foisted upon them in the recent national budget, and were told it was wonderful.
You do like banks - - - > You vote for capitalists
is that simple enough for you?