Food for Thought: When asked at the recent Economist Conference event for CFOs and finance directors in London, about whether Greece would end up leaving the euro zone-Every single hand went up. And asked whether more countries than Greece would leave the euro zone- roughly two-thirds of the audience agreed upon the notion.

Coming a week after an agreement on a second international bail-out for Greece, such certainty that the country would have to exit the euro was striking. It may be that an audience in London, albeit a cosmopolitan one, is prone to midjudge the willingness of the euro-zone creditors to keep lending money to Greece even if the country’s programme goes off-track again. But yours truly believes their judgment is right, for three reasons.

Firstly, the demands being made of Greece will be almost impossible to meet since they will eventually need more money or some kind of leniency. Secondly, there is a finite amount of times that creditor nations can justify bail-outs to their taxpayers, and the poisonous manner in which the latest package was agreed suggests this point may already have been reached. There is a good chance that approving extra money is becoming politically impossible. To be clear, a Greek default is not the worry. It is already happening, after all: a 70% plus fall in the net present value of private-sector bonds counts as a pretty severe pasting for investors.

Thirdly, the prospect of euro zone departures doesn’t scare people as much as it should. The overall mood of the delegates at the conference was relatively confident about the effects of an exit. Contingency plans were in place at their firms to deal with it; this wouldn’t be another 2008!

Yet 2008 is what the current scenario worryingly resembles. If anything is seemed to be believed, more rescues are needed. Politicians are reaching the point where they believe that injecting more public money into falling entities is untenable. And there is an assumption that people have had enough time to prepare for the consequences of a shock that it would be absorbable. That strongly echoes the mood when policymakers let Lehman fail. But sometimes in life, it’s good to be afraid.