This Greek crisis is interesting.  I find it funny how the Greek people are protesting the austerity measures and going on strike.  It's not funny that they have to go through those measures, and it's understandable that they are angry about what they have to give up.
It just seems as if they do not realize their leaders have no choice.  It's pretty cut and dry:

• Foreign investors will not throw good money after bad.
• Greece needs foreign money.
• Greece needs to convince investors it is fixing it's broken system.
• Greek leaders impose painful measures in order to avoid far more painful circumstances.

My question is, why are there people protesting that? They might as well be protesting against gravity.

The more interesting question is how much does the current Greek situation parallel what we are in now? I am not talking about the occupy protests going on right now. I am talking more about our debt-powered economy.  Personally, I have been against cuts in Federal spending until the economy improves, but isn't that the same argument the Greek protestors are making?  Perhaps the difference is that the United States is not on the verge of defaulting on our debt. We still have foreign investors willing to loan us money. Austerity measures are not our only option. Even if we did take austerity measures, they would look far different. We also have our own currency, whereas Greece does not.  I think that may be just as important to their situation.

I think Greece does offer a good example for us of non-sustainable socialism.  All sorts of money flows down from the government, people get used to it, and when the money is no longer available, the citizens act like spoiled children who have to give up their iPhones because their dad lost his job. Actually, it may be worse than that. I would think if a family were going through a financial crisis, they might all rally together to try to scrape by.  The Greeks seem hell-bent on destroying themselves.

Back to our situation though, when is our economy going to pick up enough steam that we can finally start running a surplus in our Federal budget again? Could we restructure our economy so we don't rely on debt?