That has been the situation in Greece as their shattered economy teetered dangerously towards the abyss and threatened their membership of the Eurozone.

It is just over a decade since the nation which gave birth to the Olympic Movement celebrated with one of the most pleasurable of Games in Athens, albeit accomplished by the skin of the teeth and minus the odd lick of paint.

There was some chaos then in the build-up to Athens 2004, just as there is now as the financial and social crisis deepens.

We Grecophiles who appreciate what that cultured, hospitable country has done for sport wish it had the wherewithal - or the saviour - to rescue its people from such an awful mess.

We wonder, too, how much the cost if staging the Olympics has contributed to the parlous predicament. Probably no more than a drop in the Agean Sea but it is something future Games hosts, not least Rio de Janeiro, may well ponder.

I am neither a politician nor an economist so I have no idea what the outcome will be. Nor am I a student of Greek mythology though I do offer the thought that what Greece could do with now is another Helen of Troy.

Or more, realistically, another Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki. Or preferably the same one.

I first met her when she was drafted in to lead the Athens Olympic bid and brilliantly out-manoeuvred that  crafty old Italian fox Dr Primo Nebiolo to  snatch it from under his Roman nose.

I was impressed with her then and even more so  when a graceless Greek Government bade their Games-winning diva thank you and goodnight only to realise their error when preparations were heading for disaster.

The then IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had warned that Athens could forfeit the Games if the organisers and the Government did not act quickly. Angelopoulos, the raven-haired multi-millionairess and ex-MP and lawyer who originally won them for the Greek capital had been dumped because her popularity made her a dangerous political opponent. But she was hastily recalled, and that yellow card became a green light.

Tables were thumped and heads banged together and Angelopoulos, who wielded a far meaner handbag than Margaret Thatcher ever did, fought bitterly to head off what would have been the greatest humiliation in the nation's history (until now of course). "I am a proud Greek and I was determined to see my country change because of the Games,'' she told me at the time.

“I have worked no magic. It has all been done professionally, by hard work, and there is still much more to do. These have been dark days, anxious days, but now we have reached the turning point. This has always been my goal.”

Now I wonder if the right-leaning Mrs A had returned to politics after the Games whether Greece might be facing a different future today.

There was a time when it was believed she might become Greece’s Foreign Minister which could have led to her ascendancy to the Premiership. Who knows?

Instead she elected to become, for a while proprietor of one of Greek’s leading newspapers and later an Ambassador for the Greek State with special responsibility for youth and sport.

But interestingly she keeps her finger on the political pulse and had this to say after this year’s Greek election and change of Government.

“For too long, Greece has been unfairly singled out. Nations around the world run afoul of financial obligations, but we are called to account. People around the world work less hard than Greeks, but we are stereotyped as lazy.

“I know and I have seen a different Greece. The Greece I saw leading up to the Athens Olympics was a Greece that was willing to sacrifice and willing to meet and exceed international standards. As a sponsor of students at the Clinton Global Initiative University I've seen first-hand the energy and potential of Greece's young people.

"Inspiring movements and capturing potential requires time, and it requires leadership.

“When I served in the Greek Parliament, I was a member of a centre-right party. Our new Prime Minister [Alexis Tsipras] represents the left. You might think that I would reflexively oppose him, but I believe he represents the new leadership Greece needs. Now what he needs, is time.”

What he also needs is a large dollop of the Angelopoulos Olympic spirit.

In her book My Greek Drama, the absorbing memoirs of her days as President of the 2004 Athens Olympic Organising Committee (ATHOC) , she recalled:“If I was the Olympic 'bitch' at times - and I was - it was because I had no choice. I had too get things done with a dispatch that was not customary in our country."

Angelopoulos explains that she felt it was imperative for ATHOC not to overspend."One message, one inviolable rule, had primacy," she wrote. "Stay on budget!...One euro over and they will hang all of us."

It is a message that has an Olympic ring of truth today even if it is all Greek even to the Greeks themselves.