Greece reported recently that it has reached a primary budget surplus, the Holy Grail of austerity, meaning that once you exclude interest payments on the country's massive debts, the country is finally taking in more revenue than it spends.

This news should be worthy of a ticker-tape parade, after three years of Draconian retrenchment and a partial write-down of privately held Greek debt.

Cruelly, however, the main beneficiary of a return to primary surplus may not be Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his pro-bailout government, but the main opposition Syriza party, which is pushing for the country to refuse further austerity measures and declare a moratorium on its debt payments.