Greece is sinking deeper and deeper into its financial quagmire. Its debt was downgraded to junk status by rating agency Standard & Poor's today, and Portugal's debt was also downgraded on fears the troubles could spread. The news sent stock markets plummeting.

Greece's worsening situation forced it to go cap in hand to the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund on Friday, despite insisting for weeks that it wasn't looking for a bail-out.

Riots erupted in Athens again over drastic public spending cuts, not long after Greek prime minister George Papandreou sought an emergency £40 billion loan package from eurozone countries and the IMF.

Tempting as it is to dismiss the Greek woes as those of a little faraway country in the Med, Greece's fate is a stark reminder of what can happen to other countries like Portugal, Spain – and Britain – if they don't get a grip on their own spiralling debts.

The Greek meltdown is also a threat to the wider European and global economy, which is just recovering from the worst downturn in decades. At the weekend, Alistair Darling urged the European Union and the IMF to hammer out a financial rescue package for Greece as quickly as possible.

If the UK had joined the euro, unemployment today could be 15% and the recession of the last 1 1/2 years would have been much worse.

Whatever his other failings, Gordon Brown deserves credit for keeping us out, says the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Given the widespread debt problems in southern Europe - the controversially named PIGS economies - Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain - the eurozone could break up before 2015, the think tank believes.

Britain finally emerged from recession at the end of last year, but only just.

It ended with a whimper, not a bang.The economy only managed growth of 0.1% in the fourth quarter, disappointing all those who had hoped for a decisive return to growth. The number took City economists by surprise who had forecast 0.4%.

It was the longest recession in Britain's history, lasting a year and a half, and now it is officially over. Britain is the last of the major economies to come out of recession.

But this doesn't mean it's plain sailing from now on. Recovery is going to take years and no one is ruling out a double dip where the economy tips back into recession after a few months of lacklustre growth.

As anyone struggling through the snow may be suspecting already, Britain is not the greatest place to live in the world. A study released today has in fact placed it way down the list, after Lithuania, in 25th place.

So why is Britain considered such an international disaster, and just where are the best places to live in the world?

Hopes that Britain's recession may have ended in the summer were crushed by official figures yesterday morning, and the outlook for the next few years is decidedly gloomy.

That means the UK is still lagging behind the recovery in every other major economy.

Which doesn't bode well for our spot on the world stage.

Cheerful news for Christmas anyone?

It's official. Everything is going really well. Those redundancies? A figment of your imagination. That record-breaking borrowing? A mere blip. Because according to a new study by the Legatum Institute, Britain is ranked 13th in the world for economic fundamentals - well ahead of the US.

So just what is going on?