The Greek sovereign debt crisis can be viewed as a microcosm for the global economy. Through the 2000s the Greek government, already heavily indebted, gained access to cheap finance via debt markets that had been lulled into a false sense of EU-phoria. Athens put this easy money to use with a starkly short-term outlook: juicing public wages, expanding pension schemes, and staging the $15 billion vanity project of the 2004 Olympics. When ratings agencies and bond investors finally wised up in 2009, there was no money left to pay down Greece’s towering debts. And the rest is the woeful piece of history now unfolding before our very eyes.

This dynamic isn’t far off from what is now unfolding on a global scale.