It's definitely not a third world country. Despite the crisis, greeks still have good free healthcare and education and crime is still low. Don't know for how long though.

The thing with the Porsches is a hyperbole, but it's also true that Greeks have become avid spenders in the past decade. There is this Nielsen report that showed that in 2008 Greece was number 1(!) in (designer) brand awareness worldwide: http://pl.nielsen.com/site/documents/ConsumersandDesignerBra... . Not a healthy sign for a country that produces almost none of those expensive products.

Most of this money went to vitalize local markets that had no future, such as construction (building very expensive houses in a country that already has one of the highest home-ownership rates in europe), food/entertainment and retail. Very little was spent on investing, mainly because tight regulations make it hard to take business risks.

The phrase "third world" has nothing to do with economic conditions, and everything to do with allegiance to a particular policito-economic block. Thanks to the work of the allies (and particularly the brits) during the closing parts of WW2 Greece is aligned with NATO after WW2. After the collapse of the soviet union I don't know that it makes much sense to talk about 1st, 2nd and 3rd world countries any more.

> where did all the money go

They spent the money.

It's no difference to running up a big credit card debt, but at some point you have to pay it back.

What went wrong for Greece was it maxed out it's government credit card and none of the banks would let them up their credit limit.

Now the goverment doesn't have a lot of money comming in but it still has a massive debt.

That debt has to be payed back or else they have to default (i.e. go bankrupt).

Well, for sake of argument, if it all went on buying Porsches and Mercedes then it's pretty easy to tell where the money went....

Right,

It went to Germany. But you can't hold them responsible for this mess. Germany is a export based country, they are also more productive than the Greeks. They have managed their money well.

The only thing is that the Euro facilitated such things more easily.

But Germany can't be blamed for it. Imagine you go to a supermarket and buy like crazy. You know you don't have a way of paying it back, but you keep buying. Soon you run out of your credit limit of buying more. Soon you are in a situation where you owe the bank a lot of money and have no money of retuning it back.

Who is to be blamed, can you blame the supermarket for selling stuff? Or the bank for lending you money? Or you for not knowing when to stop?

Personally, I would give the majority of the blame to the banks (say 60%) and the rest to the borrower. The reason for this is that, in my experience, banks have got a lot less careful about who they lend money to (at least when it comes to personal lending).

> It went to Germany.

The last numbers I read for Greece's imports from Germany were very small, in the low one-digit range. So I am not sure this is valid to say "it went to Germany" although at the beginning of the crisis this was a picture the Greek newspapers were all too happy to paint: the wealthy, greedy Germans who got fat and rich off of all those Greeks buying so much from them...

Most of the money was used for general government spending.

Governments earn money with taxes, fees etc and spend money on infrastructure, health, pensions, education, public servants etc.

Now the problem with Greece is not unlike what is also happening in the US today.

The money the Greek government spent was always more than the money they earned.

To cover the difference they just printed Greek Bonds and sold these to European banks to cover the shortfall.

Where things went wrong for Greece is not long ago they printed another round of Greek Bonds only to find none of the banks would buy them.

So overnight the Greek government runs out of money and is broke.

Now they need German/French EU handouts to cover this shortfall but the Germans/Frenchs won't give them money uless they agree to big spending cuts.

Hence the current impass.