Der Spiegel on the stakes now unfolding in Greece and the Eurozone:

The banking crisis has turned into a crisis of entire nations, and the subprime mortgage bubble into a government debt bubble. This is why precisely the same questions are being asked today, now that entire countries are at risk of collapse, as were being asked in the fall of 2008 when the banks were on the brink: How can the calamity be prevented without laying the ground for an even bigger disaster? Can a crisis based on debt be solved with even more debt? And who will actually rescue the rescuers in the end, the ones who overreached?

More:

All of the major industrialized countries have lived beyond their means for decades. Even in good times, government budget deficits continued to expand. The United States, in particular, paid for its prosperity on credit. The poor example set by the state was contagious — US citizens began buying cars and houses they couldn’t really afford, and banks speculated with borrowed money.
Things couldn’t possibly go well forever and, indeed, the financial crisis put an end to the days of unfettered spending. To avert a collapse, governments came to the rescue with vast sums of money, guaranteed their citizens’ savings and jump-started the economy with massive stimulus programs — all with borrowed money, of course.
The world was saved, temporarily at least, but since then it has accumulated more debt than ever before in peacetime. The national deficits of the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have grown almost sevenfold since 2007, to about $3.4 trillion today. Their total debt burden has also grown dramatically, to a record-setting $43 trillion. In the euro zone, national deficits have even grown 12-fold in the same time period, with the euro-zone countries accumulating $7.7 trillion in debt.
The current government debt bubble is the last of all possible bubbles. Either governments manage to slowly let out the air, or the bubble will burst. If that happens, the world will truly be on the brink of disaster.

Read the whole thing. Twice.