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One Greek Not Bearing Gifts

There is the saying...beware of Greeks bearing gifts!

All too sadly the financial mess in which Greece now finds itself has all the hallmarks of spreading to other European countries - with a ripple-effect beyond.

The Nation provides the background to Greece's plight in "Athens: The First Domino?"

"The shadow of classical Greece has always loomed large over Western civilization--whether in literature, philosophy, art, mathematics, history or politics, it has been, in so many ways, the fons et origo of us all. Modern Greece suddenly seems poised to play that same outsized role, but by no means in the same civilizing way. Athens's fiscal crisis could very well ignite the next global financial crisis--just as the world hoped it might be starting a slow exit from the last one.
After meeting with fellow European leaders in Brussels in early February, where he argued the case for help in solving the hefty budget deficit he'd inherited on taking office last fall, Prime Minister George Papandreou flew home to Athens to tell his countrymen that he'd returned with a half-full cup of promises--and no assurance of the serious backing Greece needs to weather its woes. Global markets, which had been fibrillating nervously for three months about Greece's (and the euro's) financial health, skipped several beats after Papandreou's speech, after already suffering a long sell-off that wiped out much of Wall Street's shaky recovery. All eyes are anxiously casting about for Delphic signs of what Europe's finance ministers will do when they meet to hear Greece make its case again, this time in hard numbers.

The situation has the makings of an Aeschylean tragedy. If help isn't forthcoming, little Greece--whose economy is just 3 percent of Europe's GDP--could, against its will, set off a chain reaction that pulls down Portugal, Ireland, Spain, perhaps even Italy, and thereby throws Europe's, and then America's and the rest of the world's, fragile recoveries into reverse.

The crisis is, in classic Greek fashion, ripe with ironies."

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