Europe faces a world of pain – even if Greece stays in the euro

Greece's proposed referendum may be the best chance the eurozone has of remaining intact. But even if it does, says John Stepek, it still faces a huge slump.

"Greeks punch gift horse in the face"

That headline on the satirical website, The Daily Mash, summed up the angry reaction of Europe's leaders to Greek prime minister George Papandreou's call for a referendum on the next bail-out.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.