U.S. markets reacted badly to the squabbling in Europe on Wednesday, as Greek leaders charged Germans with insulting them and wanting to push Greece out of the euro, even after Greece’s Parliament — in defiance of protests that set central Athens ablaze — had voted for austerity measures required to unlock the next tranche of a European bailout.

After that vote, Rendezvous reported on the obstacles still ahead, but we didn’t count on Europeans’ apparent lack of faith in the Greeks, which came bubbling to the surface in the corridors of Brussels on Wednesday, Stephen Castle and Niki Kitsantonis report.

While the debate continues over how much to give Greece and when to give it, Russell Shorto, a contributing writer for the magazine, takes you on a journey to discover how Greeks live now. In the process, he ends up unveiling much about how Greece is likely to live tomorrow, and the place it — and Europe? — may occupy in an international order that is rapidly shifting:[indent]

By many indicators, Greece is devolving into something unprecedented in modern Western experience. A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system.

Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed.

The situation at the macro level is, if anything, even more transformational. The Chinese have largely taken over Piraeus, Greece’s main port, with an eye to make it a conduit for shipping goods into Europe. Qatar is looking to invest $5 billion in various projects in Greece, including tourism infrastructure. Other, relatively flush Europeans are trying to make “Greece the Florida of Europe,” Theodore Pelagidis, a Greek economist at the University of Piraeus, told me, referring in particular to plans to turn islands into expensive retirement homes for wealthy people from other parts of the continent. Whether or not the country pays its debts, he went on, other nations and foreign companies “now understand the Greek government is powerless, so in the future they will take over viable assets and run parts of the country by themselves.”[/indent]

Mr. Pelagidis envisions a two-tiered Greek society: the middle class, 30 to 50 percent of the population, who rebound from the current crisis, and the rest: They “will be living on 300 or 400 euros ($400 to $500) a month.

This part of Greek society won’t be living a Western European lifestyle. It will be more like Bulgaria.”

nytimes.com