It is long since established fact that Europeans are divided into four different categories: the benevolently incompetent, the stiff and aggressive, the child-in-a-candy-stores, and the sit-back-and-coast-on-the-laurels.  Countries like Britain and Holland started out as stiff aggressives, but as their empires were skimmed, they matured into strong coasters-on-the-laurels.  The Scandinavians were also stiff aggressives and continue to be so, but due to their extensive natural resources, have become less aggressive but ever more stiff as they rest on their laurels, too.  The Germans and Swiss have and always will be stiff aggressives.  The Eastern Europeans have and always will be children-in-the-candy stores, too eager to run the show before they know there are rules, but always hoping to become coasters-on-the-laurels.  The Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Italians are benevolent incompetents.  The benevolence exists because each of these countries sees something on the economic horizon.  No one knows what to call the Greeks anymore; they’ve passed through every category.  During their heyday over two thousand years ago, they were stiff aggressives, postulating philosophies and systems of ethics and staging orgies the Germans only got to a few centuries ago.  This gave way naturally to coasting on their laurels (i.e. massive glorification of past achievements).  Every nation does this to some degree -- the more desperate, the more often.  Like a bike coasting down a hill, any nation can coast only so far, and when the momentum ended, Greece became benignly incompetent.  If a nation manages to improve its economic image at this point, it can stay in the benign incompetence category for centuries.  But Greece has managed, believe it or not, to worsen its economic plight by joining the European Union, thus pushing the pathetic nation into children’s diapers inside a candy store.  By 1988, much of the candy store was in ruins, and historians worldwide were trying to come up with a fifth category.