By: Ryan Matthew Dernick

The suicide rate in Greece jumped 40% year-on-year in first five months of 2011. Dually the number of young people without a job outnumbered those with one.

This past Wednesday a 77-year-old man took his own life in the busy Syntagma Square in central Athens, the scene of several violent clashes between anti-austerity protesters and the police in recent months. Nearly one thousand people gathered for another rally Thursday in Syntagma Square, which was largely peaceful apart from a few scuffles between small groups of protesters, Athens police said.

Retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas shot himself with a handgun amid the morning rush hour, in what was apparently a protest over the financial crisis gripping the nation.

Apostolos Polyzonis 55 businessman set himself on fire outside his bank last year after falling into financial woes.

This is not just regional to Greece but Geo-economically systemic as many other European Countries own Greek Debt like Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany,  Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom. Elsewhere in the world Australia, Canada, Chile, India, Japan, United States, Chinese Taipei, Singapore also own Greeks toxic debts sold through derivatives or credit default swaps by the IMF World Bank along with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

With ever-growing unemployment, scarcer and fewer jobs available an Economic Depression has now thoroughly entrenched the Grecian people.

Economist Max Keiser of the “Keiser Report” met with Steve Forbes of Forbes Magazine last June 2011 in an International Chamber of Commerce meeting while in Greece. Steve Forbes reportedly said to Keiser, “this is an amazing opportunity we are going to buy the airport and other properties for pennies on dollar.”

Greece’s economy is estimated to have shrunk by a about a fifth since 2008, when it plunged into its deepest and longest post-war recession. About 600,000 jobs, more than one in ten, have been destroyed in the process. A record 1,033,507 people were without work in December, 41 percent more than in the same month last year. The number in work dropped to a record low of 3,899,319, down 7.9 percent year-on-year.

“Despite some emergency government measures to boost employment in early 2012, it is hard to see how the upward unemployment trend can be stabilized in the first half of the year,” said Nikos Magginas, an economist at National Bank of Greece.

Pressured by its international backers under the terms of a planned European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout, the country’s second since 2010, Greece last month slashed its minimum monthly wage by about a fifth to about 580 euros ($760), gross, to encourage job growth.