"Unless you were rich, a business executive, a celebrity, or among the few privileged elite who run the country and for whom every year is a banner year of profiteering, 2011 was the worst year for most Greeks since the American-backed junta of repressive Right-Wing Colonels fell in 1974. The economic crisis rolled on, along with more pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and scores of thousands of layoffs in a bloated public sector that conspired with politicians for years for a sweetheart deal of lifetime employment in no-heavy lifting, no-show jobs, nice pay checks and early retirement until the day of reckoning came.
The country finished a fourth consecutive year of recession that brought some sad numbers to the country that invented math but couldn’t count when it counted: 17.5 percent unemployment, 500,000 people with no income; 500,000 who gave up and ran screaming to other countries looking for a better life (many of the country’s young and best and brightest among them stifled by a system in which lackeys and troglodytes with political connections get the best jobs and then do nothing); the fastest increase in the rates of suicide and homelessness in Europe; a $460 billion debt that shows no signs of abating; a 10 percent deficit that is three times higher than the ceiling set by the Eurozone, the 17 countries that use the euro as a currency; and an as-yet unmeasured and incalculable number of people who have lost hope."
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