The European authorities have engaged in a shameless PR campaign, presenting the Greek default as a resounding success. Prime Minister Luca Papademos said before the nation that the debt restructuring represents a "historic success", which for the first time results in a reduction of the public debt. The former official of the European Central Bank neglected to explain however, how the debt reduction actually works, when a "haircut" of 110 billion Euros is actually replaced with loans of 130 billion Euros.

Now the markets have turned their attention to Portugal, Spain and even Ireland, which was denied the request to postpone the payment of 3.1 billion Euros, which was coming to maturity at the end of this month.

For now, the banks have focused on the countries in the first line of European bankruptcies, and have been neglecting the countries in the second tier, where Slovenia is currently ranked.

In a hurry to leave the political instability of the former Yugoslavia behind, the Slovenians became EU citizens in 2004 and joined the Eurozone in 2007. New markets opened up for the Slovenian companies, the interest rates fell and a wave of foreign financing boosted the economy.

Between joining the EU and until 2008, the country's GDP increased 5%, compared to an average of 4% seen between 1993 and 2003. Unfortunately, the drawbacks of switching to the Euro were not noticed or were disregarded until the onset of the global financial crisis.

The economic growth was stimulated by the unprecedented advance of the private debt, which came to amount to 130% of the GDP at the end of 2011. In 2004 the leverage of the private sector was about 75%, according to Eurostat data.

Between 2004 and 2007, the weight of the public debt in the GDP fell from 27% to 23%, and then boomed, amid the fiscal stimulus measures, rising to almost 48%, in 2011. Sin