What A Country Built On Borrowed Money Eventually Looks Like

Another account of the escalating misery befalling Greek society. 

Anastasia Karagaitanaki, 57, is a former model and cafe owner in Thessaloniki, Greece. After losing her business to the financial crisis, she now sleeps on a daybed next to the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen and depends on charity for food and insulin for her diabetes.  

“I feel like my life has slipped through my hands,” said Karagaitanaki, whose brother also shares the one-bedroom apartment. “I feel like I’m dead.”

For thousands of Greeks like Karagaitanaki, the fabric of middle-class life is unraveling. Teachers, salaries slashed by a third, are stealing electricity. Families in once-stable neighborhoods are afraid to leave their homes because of rising street crime.

This ought to be a cautionary tale about what a society built on borrowed money eventually comes to, but I doubt it will register where it needs to.  Please note the euphemism used throughout the article, "middle class" is a stand-in for 'government workers paid for by government borrowing'.  When there comes a day where there can be no more government borrowing, there can be no more of these government workers.  There was alot of this rhetoric flying around here in the US during the presidential campaign just concluded (and the fiscal cliff campaign Obama is currently waging).  If the "middle class" we've built here in America relies on continued borrowing of $1 trillion per annum, that middle class is doomed.  This article, then, describes the future unless we change course.  On present evidence, we ain't changin'.