Peter Dausend and Mark Schieritz on a fictitious national bankruptcy

In the weekly Die Zeit Peter Dausend and Mark Schieritz dream up the fictitious scenario of a national bankruptcy in a model country in Europe: "Bank managers apologise to the people on evening news programmes. Travel agencies offer five-day 'anti-depressive bus tours' to neighbouring countries. A manager announces he's buying a weapon to protect himself and his family. The hip restaurants in banking districts sell 'crisis burgers' with half-rations of bacon and cheese. The aura of success has evaporated, as the money has long since done. The smell of chips is everywhere. Welcome to Model Country! Model Country is an EU member state in Europe. Several banks here are facing bankruptcy - and now countless companies along with them. Elections have been called. Our Model Country has its own crisis burgers just like in Dublin, armed bank managers like in London, and an all-pervading sense of fear like everywhere else. The conditions and events in Model Country may be fictitious but they're based on reality elsewhere. Our Model Country is not Germany or Ireland or Hungary or the UK, but what happens in Model Country could happen in any of these places. In Model Country you can see what happens when the safety nets tear, when politics fails. What happens when a country capsizes."

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