Puerto Rico is facing an unsustainable level of debt. Its lenders, guardians of financial probity that they are, have come up with a solution: close schools.

After all of the boisterous noise about rejecting austerity, Greece has finally agreed to the outlines of a bailout to address its debt crisis: more austerity. Its future is grim(mer). At times like this, it is useful to ask which side has the morality, and which has only the hazards.

On Sunday, Greece overwhelmingly rejected the bailout terms proposed by its European creditors, with a projected 61% of the country voting “no” to further austerity measures via a national referendum, the Associated Press reports.

After exit polls showed left-wing coalition Syriza handily winning Greece's parliamentary election on Sunday, a senior minister with the country's ruling center-right party publicly admitted defeat, the Associated Press reports.

Philadelphia public schools might not open on time in September, as the school district struggles to recover from draconian cuts made by Governor Tom Corbett.

A California police department is letting people found guilty of misdemeanors that include jail time pay fees to avoid getting put into rough prisons.

The city of Detroit is in a bad, bad way. Its austerity-driven emergency manager Kevyn Orr finally took the city into bankruptcy earlier this week, nullifying several municipal contracts and essentially looking to push the reset button on an entire working-class American city.

Philadelphia laid off thousands of school employees last week after the state of Pennsylvania continued its austerity measures against public schools. And while the state is essentially destroying Philadelphia public schools through under-funding (claiming budgetary concerns), it somehow found enough money to build a $400 million prison just outside of the city.

A retired couple in Italy killed themselves Friday after they saw their pensions evaporate and their quality of life plummet as Italy (and Europe as a whole) continues to experience deep economic recession and stagnation.

Meeting with journalists this morning, Pope Francis laid out his vision for the Catholic church, which includes cutting spending on ornate ceremony and instead spending that money on the poor. He urged excited fellow-Argentines to skip the costly trip to Rome to visit the first non-European Pope in almost 1,300 years, and instead give that money to the poor.

Merriam-Webster.com announced today that austerity was their most looked-up word in 2010, ahead of pragmatic, moratorium, and, gasp!, socialism. Fitting that people are looking for austerity in these penny-pinched times. "With great austerity, Sarah Palin boundered across the Alaskan tundra..."

On one hand: Wall Street is back! Morgan Stanley and Bank of America may post their biggest revenues in history this year. But don't be fooled. It's a hard holiday season for the little people. (The bankers.)

The Way We Live Now: Austerely. Everyone is! Greece is. Nevadans are. You know Chile's not living it up. Everyone is dead broke, it seems...except the fancy Japanese. Are we gonna stand for that?