Just as an aside

This is part of the problem (as far as hot the problem is reported/perceived) - perception:

Despite its desperate circumstances, however, Lewis shared a wonderful story about how Vallejo's fire chief is moving heaven and earth to do more with less. As a result of seeing that resourceful and inspiring work, Lewis "has a hard time getting depressed about our country," though he admits that he "doesn't have a hard time getting depressed about Greece."

Michael Lewis is a smart guy, and a great writer, obviously. But why the difference between the US and Greek views? Left alone, Greece will do fine - or good enough for the Greeks, as it did for the last couple of thousand years. There are 11 million people in Greece - California is more than three times that at 36,961,664. This "crisis" now in Europe is a problem made of the global banking system and the Euro governments. Let them (the individual countries) clean it up, give them their sovereign currencies back, and we'll all be fine - eventually. Greece is not different that different from California (except for being smaller) - Americans just don't speak the language.