them someday you will fall off a cliff.

It would be fine if once Greece is the only one suffering maliase; but the whole world is mired in debts - no way out, no such thing as bottomless/endless bailout.

we are being deluged by Fed Reserve phony limitless electronic credit /easy money in attempt to refloat the entire global financial system built on foundation of sand;

the foundation is sinking gradually, some will land harder & hurt more than others eventually

Indians are very smart born techie gurus, come to America to take over all high tech jobs at 1/3 wages.

one ruppe will trade for one hundreds American dollars, and one thousand ruppe sold for a straw hut in Bombay will buy one foreclosed American house we bet your rock bottom dollar,

the world is looking better everyday

How sad is it that he was trying to help the you 'lost' couple when they consorted to rip him off. The Greek's will recover from this, but like most countries during this age of financial uncertainty - things look to be getting worse, before they get better.

It is just sad that the Greek people, who have been known as the feel good people are collectively down.

This too shall pass... but hopefully quickly.

"Is this what it's come to?" That is as downhearted as we ever thought he would be. "Looting from each other in in the middle of the day???" I suspect he sipped his coffee and turned on the TV news and all there was a prom dress in indianapolis

I recently sat with my 22 year ols son who had tried to get a car loan, and figured out that American legislators, consumer activists, and politicians in his city of Atlanta Ga. had made policies so stringent that he was unable to get a simple car loan.

The lawmakers and politicians have so over regulated many of our avenues for the movement of financial products that the locale lenders have almost shut down.

I am 47 years old, and can remember when America was a shining star on a hill full of wealth, good hearts, fair capatalism, and good will towards one another. That seems to have changed by way of a greedy wall street, slimy government that can be easily bought out by lobbyists, and a division between the haves and have nots that has almost destroyed the middle class.

Divide and conquer i do believe to be the intent, and in America the media is doing all they can to divide, while the Goverment conquers.

My son broke down having to get a title loans from a pawn shop to purchase a car. The main point being that the world as a whole seems to be coming apart at the seams, so Greece is not alone. I honestly believe that the entire world is coming upon a new age of reckoning, and that all countrys will break down and rebuild with a stronger knowledge of what not to do. We are all small micro communities with varying cultures, and I believe we all need to avoid the otential pitfalls of trying to be one big happy family, and each nation society, and community be allowed to maintain their traditions in a sovereign way.

So heres to Greece, and all nations, keep an eye out for those which govern you.

Just to set the record straight, the crisis in Greece is about a government that spent way too much, and borrowed itself into oblivion. Plain and simple.

Yes, there is tax evasion, but it is not the main problem in Greece. A profligate state that spends way too much and way too wastefully is the real problem. Ask any Greek whether they believe that if all taxes were fully paid and evasion were non-existent, (i) would the crisis have been averted, or (ii) would the state have spent away all that additional money and still borrowed itself to death? 99% of the time you will get reply (ii). This is about a wasteful clientelistic state that creates numerous restictions to protect or promote certain constituencies, and then allows others who have 'inside connections' to evade appropriate laws and regulations.

I also take issue with the quote "The debt crisis has prompted the fast-tracking of reforms such as the privatization of state assets, a crackdown on rampant tax evasion, and the dismantling of a bloated public sector -- changes that should have been made years ago."

There has been zero privatization, very minimal crackdown on tax evasions (which in any case is not the main problem as I state above), and the bloated public sector is, if anything, even more bloated because the government has opted to put the main burden of adjustment on the private sector. Unemployment has shot up from 8 to 16% officially (in reality probably 20%) and that is entirely from the private sector since not a single public sector job has yet been lost. As a share of the economy- which is shrinking at an alarming rate- public expenditure has risen sharply since government spending has actually risen in 2011. Greeks are more heavily taxed than they were- like the author's uncle, because the government refuses to genuinely shrink the public sector. It also has failed to liberalize the economy, and keeps legislating instead of governing. Hence economic activity is crashing, uncertainty is high, and people are scared- which means they consume less and have ceased investing, thus shrinking the economy even further. This is the real problem in a nutshell, and the current government (which did inherit a very bad situation from its predecessort) has failed miserably because it is chasing the wrong problem.