Deeply in debt, Greece faces a Spartan future

By Henry Chu
LA Times
February 10, 2010

Reporting from Athens

Christos Maggelis is nothing but a bit player in the latest Greek drama. Yet somehow, he fumes, he's the one being punished by the gods.

Those would be the ruling politicians of this sun-kissed land who, like Hercules and the Augean stables, face a cleanup task of mammoth proportions: getting rid of a toxic mountain of government debt that threatens the financial health of much of Europe.

To do so, Greece wants to cut the pay of hundreds of thousands of civil servants on its overstuffed payroll as part of a tough new public-spending regimen. But Maggelis and his fellow workers are fighting back with a massive walkout planned for Wednesday and the promise of more strikes to come.

"It can't be that civil servants pay for the mistakes of past governments," Maggelis said. "The only result of this policy is that they'll add more poor people to the number of poor already out there."

(More here.)