IN THE middle of Syntagma Square in central Athens, flanked on one side by parliament and on another by luxury hotels, would-be revolutionaries jostle for space with phlegmatic African street-traders selling handbags. On June 22nd one group of youngsters conducted a spontaneous "economics lesson" in which terms such as "credit event" and "haircut" were explained and deconstructed. Petrograd 1917, or even Paris 1968, it was not. Nonetheless, the stakes are very high. It is entirely possible that in the weeks to come the situation in Athens could go from being strained, angry and confused to plain catastrophic: negotiations between Greece's economic rescuers and its political leaders may fail, and the state may run out of money and/or crash out of the euro, triggering a financial crisis that would reverberate round the world.
展开▼
