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The term "Grexit" officially appeared in early February 2012 for the first time when Willem Buiter, Global Chief Economist of Citigroup, used it in a report to Citigroup customers. Since then the term had been widely used for about a year and it reappeared shortly before the election period in January, its use being frequent even today, as stated by Petros Lazos in his analysis published by capital.gr.

Over the past three weeks, a new term, "Grexident", has appeared on various economic websites and on Twitter. It is a combination of "Grexit" and "incident" and is a short expression for "Greece’s exit from the euro zone because of an incident". How has it emerged? Apparently, the government’s "twists and turns", contradictions and "overleaping" have created the impression and expectations of such an incident.

"But no country can leave the euro zone, there is no such thing in the agreements", you would say. It is not quite so. Indeed, the European agreements do not provide for a procedure for a member state to exit the euro zone. However, this can happen if a state violates any of the main clauses of the agreements, inadvertently or deliberately. I.e. in the way that lawyers call de facto.

Therefore, if a member state wants to, it can do so, by starting to print its own currency for example.

It is no coincidence that, after the elections, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have started to reject with disgust the probability of Greece exiting the euro zone. Especially the Minister of Finance repeats this at every opportunity, which they did not do with the same fervour before.

A typical expression is, "The euro is not a fetish."

However, what does an "incident" mean when talking about a country exiting the common currency union? And how could this happen? It means thats a state commits a rash act with which to violate one or several key clauses of the agreements, despite its will. One such act would be to attempt to intervene in the independent activity of the local central bank, for example, by trying to change its leader before the expiry of his term or by asking to use the liquidity available to it to buy or service its debt (i.e. to use the resources of the bank itself, and not those of the organizations and funds that it manages).

"Therefore, if the other member states want to, they can force a country to leave the euro zone." Of course, they can. "Therefore, by combining the appropriate pressures Europeans can expel Greece from the common monetary union whenever they want." Yes, but the keyword here is "want". Their behaviour so far has not indicated that they want to do so. The question as to why that is, is the subject of a totally different and extensive conversation, but it is clear that this is the case. This was demonstrated in the recent talks as well. While they believe that such an outcome is likely to be avoided, under their conditions, they will avoid it.

"Accordingly, the Greek government could use the threat of Grexit and win concessions." Absolutely not. "Why?" It is because "there is more than one way to skin a cat" as Anglo-Saxons say. Try to imagine the sequence of the facts and actions below and to compare them with the current situation of Greece:

1. The Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) continues to fund Greek banks, despite the lack of collateral, but is limited to the absolute minimum or even slightly below it.

2. Continuous withdrawals of deposits, and lots of them, slow draining of banks.

3. Due to the above facts, a daily limit on the money amounts withdrawn from bank accounts, etc.

4. A little later, due to the lack of fresh money in the banks, greater restrictions on the total free flow of capital for imports, etc.

As you can see, if all this happens, Greece will remain outside the euro zone. But it will have an almost paralyzed and unproductive banking system, frozen economy and several million angry citizens.

Now is the time for big decisions for each government that should set as a priority to avoid both "Grexit" and "Grexident", which the vast majority of Greeks want too.