The PIIGS sty

The sign reads: I’m not paying.

Greece, the weakest member of the so-called PIIGS — Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, the most highly indebted members of the European Monetary Union — is on strike.

Public sector workers have taken to the picket line to protest Athens’ proposed emergency austerity measures, designed to keep the country from going entirely belly-up as European leaders scramble to figure out how or whether to bail Greece out.

Indeed, the PIIGS’ problems are Europe’s problems, as Greece and other countries have broken strict Eurozone rules on how much debt and deficit relative to GDP a country can run; the big question here is the stability of the euro, not just the plight of Greek workers and businesses. Athens has a public debt equivalent to 113 percent of GDP and is running a deficit three times larger than the Eurozone allows. Reuters explains just how parlous the situation is:

Greece needs to borrow [$72.8 billion] this year. It has covered its needs until April, but then has a heavy schedule of payments of up to [$27.5 billion] by the end of June. Analysts warn that if it runs out of money to pay state wages and pensions, the backlash will be ferocious.

$72.8 billion is a whole lot of scrilla if your economy is about the same size as Connecticut’s.