The next step in the Greek debt crisis is naturally — you said it! — delay and procrastination. Now that Europe has sneaked past the Greek austerity vote, they think they’ll go on vacation and put their feet up until September. After all, it’s summer. Why rock the boat? Already we hear that tomorrow’s meeting of finance ministers originally scheduled for July 3 has been put off indefinitely at least until the fall and maybe beyond. What they’re really hoping is that those folks in the ratings agencies that score the Greek bonds’ credit worthiness will also go on vacation and maybe take a Gilligan’s Island boat to a deserted desert island from which they will never return.

There’s more bad news. Friday’s figures showed activity in Euro Zone manufacturing slowed in June while 1 in 10 citizens remain unemployed. In fact, manufacturing has reached an eighteen-month low. Exports have already gone on vacation early. Budget cuts have left more citizens without a way to even pay for a summer trip to the French Riviera. Even manufacturing in Germany has slowed to the slowest rate of expansion in 17 months. Manufacturing in Pigdom — Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece — has contracted. They figure that if they try to come up with a new bailout plan for Greece, the markets will go crazy — they never go on vacation — and we will have another mess like 2008.

So let the ECB raise the interest rates 1/4 point. Probably no one will notice as all the lights dim and all the finance ministers and their minions disappear to a mountain cabin or a condo by the sea to while away the time until the next crisis, which surely is just around the corner.