Het gaat echt helemaal mis in Griekenland. Ja, alweer ja.

The president of Greece's SEV business federation, Dimitris Daskalopoulos, recently invited journalists to his imposing neoclassical headquarters in Athens. He straightened his tie, leaned forward and with a grim expression spoke into half a dozen microphones arrayed in front of him. "Now the issue is simply whether we remain in Europe or not. The governing parties have an obligation to work together honestly to finally banish the nightmare of a return to the drachma. If this government doesn't get it right, Greece will go hungry."

His dramatic appeal was ignored, once again. The Socialist PASOK party, the conservative-liberal New Democracy party and the far-right LAOS party formed a transitional government six weeks ago under non-partisan former central banker Lucas Papademos. They vowed to avert a looming state bankruptcy. But they remain as divided as ever.

• The privatization program has completely ground to a halt. The plan was to sell off €50 billion of government-owned assets by 2015, but so far only €1.7 billion has been raised. Why? Because the government first wanted to implement the debt swap.

• Labor markets have yet to be freed up and deregulated.

• The program of public sector layoffs is a fiasco. Instead of the planned 30,000 job cuts, only around 1,000 workers have been transferred to a so-called labor reserve by the end of 2011.

• The merging or winding down of public authorities is proceeding at a snail's pace.

• The modernization of the civil serice and of the inefficient health service is plagued by delays.

• The planned third round of pension cuts has come to a stop. Additional pensions are to be cut by between 15 and 40 percent -- but the New Democracy party in particular is blocking the process.