This picture is worth approximately 317 billion words in Greek. That's how many euros its government owes, and how many euros it's going to start defaulting on if it doesn't agree on a new bailout in the next few days.
After all, you don't have to be an expert in game theory, like Greece's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is, to know it's not good if he's crouching with his head in his hands right before midnight strikes on his country's solvency. But I think we can sympathize with how he feels. We do too. The years change, but the Greek crisis doesn't. It owes more than it can pay, so it needs Europe to give it the money to pay, well, Europe back.
The problem, though, is Europe doesn't want to just hand over the money in such circular fashion without getting something else-pension and spending cuts-in return, and Greece doesn't want so many painful strings attached after it's already cut a lot and only seen its economy shrink by 25 per cent.
Now, both sides say they can't meet the other's demands, but that's how negotiations work. You try to make yourself look as implacable as possible, and hope that will make the other side cave. Until now, though, neither has. Both insist that compromise is impossible, but then, at the last minute, agree to a fudge that isn't quite a compromise but is enough of one to keep the game going. So what, if anything, has changed?
Well, the politics. Greece's new ruling party, Syriza, won power on its pledge to end the old bailout, and might not have the votes to agree to a new one that's the same all but in name. They could, of course, just be saying that to try to get better terms, but it's certainly plausible that they're not.