ATHENS: Euro leaders are scrambling to save Greece from a debt default that could cause global economic turmoil , but the Greeks themselves seem in denial. Greeks seem more inclined to blame others for their troubles than accepting that something is deeply wrong with their country and painful medicine is urgent.

" The ordinary people don't understand the seriousness of the situation...not only for Greece, but for the whole world economy," said Jan Randolph, director of Sovereign Risk Analysis at IHS Global Insight.

Violent protests against austerity measures demanded in return for an international rescue worth billions of dollars have combined with political infighting and euro zone dithering to severely spook international markets.

No single element of society appears to have fully embraced the gravity of the situation, analysts say, and investors fear political wrangling and opposition to austerity measures could push the country into a messy default on its sovereign debt, which totals 340 billion euros ($480.8 billion).

While countries like Latvia have taken IMF medicine, suffered quick but painful contractions, and are now on paths of recovery, analysts said Greece's case increasingly threatens to resemble Argentina, which defaulted in 2001 and is still shut out of financial markets.

Greece's bailout lenders, the EU and IMF, have called for national consensus behind reforms to win a new financing package. Greek's itself  is spending  great deal of time pointing fingers rather than looking for solutions.

Govt and opposition paint each other as obstructing a solution, private company workers blame the bloated public sector, civil servants blame tax cheats and most Greeks say corrupt politicians are the main problem.

" The big problem of Greek society is the tendency to consider somebody else is responsible for everything that goes wrong," said Theodore Couloumbis, of the ELIAMEP think-tank. " It's like someone who suffers from a severe disease and wants to know what caused it rather than taking precautions to cure it."

PAINFUL MEASURES -- The govt has reduced public sector wages by a fifth, raised the retirement age for women, cut pensions by more than 10 percent, and cut temporary public contract jobs.