Is Greece going to set off the long feared next wave of the Great Recession?

Frankly, I fear they have made the wrong choice by bailing out Greece

However it has rather belately become clear to me that you dish it out with far more fervor than you are able to handle it yourself.

For the time being, the markets have been pacified. For the moment, the riots in Athens have subsided. Only "hundreds" of demonstrators came out over the weekend, fewer than the 50,000 who killed three people during a violent petrol-bomb attack on a bank last week. But this temporary truce in Greece has been bought at a high price"by which I don't just mean that it was expensive.

Here in front of me, I have a draft version of the Council of the European Union's most recent "decision" on Greece. It isn't a classified document. Bits of it have been in the newspapers; the Greek parliament has already voted to pass some of its provisions; and a similar, though less comprehensive, decision was published in February. But although it's not secret, no one is yet talking much about its political significance. For this is no ordinary piece of Euro-bureaucracy: This is the kind of thing a surrendering field marshal signs in a railway car in the forest at the end of a bloody war.

LONDON (Reuters) - Gold surged to a record high on Wednesday as investors sought safety from the risk of Greece's debt crisis spreading to other countries, with demand for coins, bars and bullion-backed exchange-traded funds all climbing.

Spot gold hit $1,244.45 an ounce, a gain of nearly 20 percent since early February. It was bid at $1,238.45 an ounce at 1441 GMT (10:41 a.m. EDT) from $1,232.05 late in New York on Tuesday. U.S. gold futures hit a record $1,245.40 an ounce.

Investor buying this week was triggered by doubts that a $1 trillion rescue package to contain an escalating debt crisis in Europe would be enough to cut the chances of sovereign default in the euro zone.

Gold priced in euros extended its record high to 982.51 euros an ounce on Wednesday, and has risen 28 percent since early February, outstripping dollar gold's climb

one report i watched said that greece needs a major re-haul in the way the citizens conduct business

not good.

5. Europe's only as strong as its weakest link: The other downside of a common currency is that it links weak economies, such as Greece's, with strong ones, such as Germany's. The hope was always that the stronger Eurozone nations would elevate their weaker partners. But, as with so many things in life, the weaker element is dragging down the stronger. This creates natural resentment in Germany: The Parliament put itself in political danger by voting to approve that nation's portion of the bailout, as many Germans opposed it. Further, it creates incentive to kick out the weaker members of the Eurozone, such as Greece. That may not be the worst idea, at least temporarily, but it certainly would contribute to the impression that the euro and the Eurozone are increasingly unstable.

Are you suggesting hawk that we should adopt Chinese methods of industrial and social organisation

Learning mandarin would probably be a good idea too.

How advanced are you in that course

Nationwide, there are Chinese programs in more than 550 elementary, junior high and senior high schools, a 100% increase in two years, according to The Asia Society, an educational group. In May, when the College Board offered Mandarin Advanced Placement exams for the first time, 3,261 high school students took the test.

At the college level, enrollment in Chinese-language classes has increased 51% since 2002, according to the Modern Language Association, a language and literature education organization.

Spanish remains far and away the most popular foreign language for U.S. students: It's the choice of 80% of those who study a foreign language in America's grade and high schools, Abbott says. French is a distant second, with Latin and German vying for third-most-popular foreign language.

"But I think what's going to surprise everyone in this next survey we do is how close Mandarin is going to come to Latin and German," she says. "Chinese isn't the new French " it's the new English," says Robert Davis, director of the Chinese-language program in Chicago's public school system, which has 8,000 students studying Mandarin.

"It's not romantic. It's not because you're going to have a great time in Paris," he says. "It's very pragmatic."

That's the motivation of Martha Rios and her husband, Antonio, for having Sebastian learn Chinese, and why they moved 80 miles last summer from Gilroy, Calif., to San Francisco. Sebastian and about 70 other students at Starr King take all but one class a day in Chinese, one of 25 to 30 such immersion programs nationwide. More widespread one-hour-a-day language classes in Chinese also are gaining popularity in schools nationwide.

"My husband read about this program in the newspaper, and we wanted it for our son," Martha says.

Originally from Mexico, Sebastian's parents believe that if their son grows up speaking English, Spanish and Chinese, the world will be his oyster.

"It's for the future," Martha says. "Our families thought it was a marvelous thing. We are using the correct tools for him to succeed."

I am 48 YO, too old for the investment of time onto a new language to be worthwhile. But our kids should be and are starting to learn Mandarin.

Everything is worthwhile, if the soul isn't small.