The Greek crisis...

One of the questions most wondered is who will be next and if the bailout will even work. I recommend this Time Magazine article on what's happening in Greece. Just one part of it:

As Greece swallowed its medicine, one rating agency lowered its grade on Spain, another warned it may downgrade Portugal's debt, and the Spanish unemployment rate officially passed the 20% mark. Both countries have emphasized the ways in which they are not like Greece. They have comparatively low levels of public debt (85% of GDP for Portugal and 67% for Spain vs. Greece's 124%) and, in Portugal's case, a recent history of making tough fiscal reforms. "All serious analysts have made it perfectly clear that Spain's situation is very different from Greece's," says Finance Minister Elena Salgado. "Spain does not have, nor is it going to have, a solvency problem, so there is no need for outside aid." But if Spain has its sovereign debt under relative control, it has other problems almost as troubling. For one thing, its levels of private debt are extremely elevated. Taken together, private and public debt reach 170% of the country's GDP — an amount actually higher than Greece's total debt. And the problem with that, economists point out, is that it reduces the flexibility with which the government can respond to its own citizens' needs. "What happens if the private sector needs a bailout?" asks Fernando Ballabriga, economist at Barcelona's ESADE business school. "The rise in public debt — even if it's still below Greek levels — means that the public sector won't be able to rescue the private sector."