Three of those reasons bode ill for the global economy. The fourth is that Greece's domestic political crisis will continue for many years, with Saturday's riots and tear gas in Athens just a prologue. Greece will this year cut its public spending by 4 percent, mainly through public sector pay cuts and delayed retirement.

This is tough, but manageable. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that the median Greek retiree takes home 95 percent of final salary, while a similar German pensioner gets less than half that -- 43 percent. No wonder Germany's Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said that his government "does not intend to give a cent" to Greece in financial aid. The Greeks are on their own, faced with the political consequences of carving more than 10 percent out of public spending over the next three years.

But this brings us to the other three reasons this crisis is not over.

Number one: For the first time, the developed economies are starting to feel the pinch of baby-boom retirement. The four eurozone countries in the most trouble -- Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain -- have the most difficult demographics of any of Europe's OECD countries; that is, the lowest birth rates combined with a swelling population of retirees. There are not enough workers entering the system to pay for the pensioners leaving it.

This is starting to hit countries worldwide, including the United States, Japan and China. It makes the crisis of public finances, after the massive deficit spending of the last two years, look even more intractable.

Number two: the euro system, or at least the political solidarity that the euro's credibility requires, looks broken. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou was in Berlin Saturday. he got warm words, vague promises of "support," but no money, no aid and no guarantees of the extra $100 billion his country needs to raise this year.

The latest opinion polls indicate more than 70 percent of German respondents say the European Union should not help Greece at all. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised voters that she will not use taxpayers' money nor breach the "no bail-out clause" in the EU's treaty on monetary union.

On Sunday, Papandreou was in Paris, where President Nicolas Sarkozy said: "If we created the euro, we cannot let a country fall that is in the eurozone. Otherwise there was no point in creating the euro. We must support Greece because they are making an effort."

Again, the words were warm but the sentiment vague and there was no French money on the table. So Papandreou this week heads to Washington, where he will have talks with the International Monetary Fund, the usual recourse for countries that need bailing out when the markets are reluctant. The standard complaint from countries that turn to the IMF is that the terms imposed, in budget cuts and other reforms, can be politically lethal for the governments that borrow the IMF's money.

That should not be a problem for Greece; it is swallowing its bitter medicine and has the tear gas swirling around the Athens Parliament building to prove it. Greece's problem is different; a member of the eurozone should be able to rely on its partners in the euro, not turn to the IMF.

"I do not trust that it would be appropriate to have the introduction of the IMF as a supplier of help through standby or through any kind of such help," Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, said last week.

The reality, however, is that the IMF is looking like Greece's last resort. And the eurozone is looking like a fair-weather friend only, which puts a big question mark over the euro's pretensions to be seen as a global reserve currency rivaling the dollar.

Worse yet, it means that all the other European countries in serious fiscal trouble, starting with Portugal, Italy and Greece, are clinging to the trapeze without a net. To the short-sellers and hedge funds and other maestros of Wall Street, these countries have the equivalent of large placards on their backs saying "Kick me."

Number three: Greece raised just less than $7 billion last week and has another $90 billion still to borrow this year. Spain raised $6 billion last week and France raised $10 billion. These are just the hors d'oeuvres. Germany will be borrowing more than $100 billion this year and the United States will be raising more than $1 trillion.

The world may not be running out of money but at some point governments start running out of credibility to borrow money easily and cheaply. Interest rates go up and debt servicing takes a larger and larger slice of a national budget, which means that economic growth starts to slow.

Last year, the world spent more than 10 percent of global gross domestic product on fending off a new Great Depression. Governments accounted for about half of that in deficit spending and central banks accounted to other half in creating liquidity, which is another way of saying that they printed money. This year, they'll be doing a lot of this again because although these crisis measures fended off the worst, they have not delivered much of a recovery.

At some point, and it gets closer every day, they run out of ammo.

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