Greek PM George Papandreou floats the idea of seeking his compatriots' permission for a so-called rescue deal (that would keep the country in hock forever, as far as I can tell) and is imperiously summoned for an audience with Merkel and Sarkozy; after which he drops the plan and announces his resignation. He is replaced by Lucas Papademos (does that mean 'father of the people' or am I imagining that?), a non-elected so-called technocrat. His qualifications are that he was Governor of the Greek Central Bank at the time it lied about Greece's finances, to qualify it for the nightmare of euro membership, and was subsequently Vice President of the ECB, complicit in running a monetary policy that made Greece hopelessly uncompetitive, forcing it into a downward spiral of debt and depression. I've not seen that he has admitted to any mistakes, so one must for fear for the Greeks' future.
On a parallel track, Silvio Berlusconi muses aloud that the euro may have made Italy and the Italians poorer. A week or so after that utterance, having survived umpteen scandals up to and including the accusation of paying for sex with underage girls, and he's history. He's to be replaced by Mario Monti, two-term European Commissioner and noted EU federalist—and again, never elected to anything.
In both cases, EU officials have made clear that their austerity plans must be enacted before elections are held and that the budgetary process must be supervised by teams of foreign officials. In the words of (non-elected) European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, delivered in Florence, "this country needs reforms, not elections".
Do Greece and Italy have legitimate governments? Is it the right, or perhaps the duty, of Greeks and Italians to undertake armed insurrections, against government by placemen of foreign powers?
Update: Has Daniel Hannan visited here?
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