For the first semi decent article on Greece from the MSM.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-25/life-glimmers-amid-the-ruins-of-greek-finances-commentary-by-suzy-hansen.html“The best way to think of it is to think of Greece as a teenager,” says Stathis N. Kalyvas, a Yale University political scientist who was in Athens when I visited. “Many Greeks view the state with a combination of a sense of entitlement, mistrust and dislike similar to that of teenagers vis-ŕ-vis their parents. They expect to be funded without contributing; they often act irresponsibly without care about consequences and expect to be bailed out by the state, but that only increases their sense of dependency, which only increases their feeling of dislike for the state. And, of course, they refuse to grow up. But like every teenager, they will.”
The story of Greece recalls a familiar old world/new world tale: a poor country 30 years removed from a devastating communist-royalist civil war and five years from a fascist military dictatorship finds itself, in 1981, in the maternal embrace of European Union membership, flush with all the easy funds that follow.
Two decades later come the success of the 2004 Olympics, the arrival of Dolce & Gabbana, the proliferation of credit cards, and an airport as polished as a museum. Life, on the surface, looks good though the old, unhealthy habits continue: public-sector employment for life, politicians with stuffed pockets, an aversion to foreign investment, snail-like growth, communal life that keeps people happy at the taverna table but stifles individual creativity, a sense that beating the “system” is what the smart people do.
