You must not understand how the EU freedom of movement works. The EU functions sort of like a “United States” of Europe. There are no border checks within the main continent and EU citizens have the right to live and work in any EU state. These people were not trying to get Greek citizenship, they are trying to get EU citizenship and the huge advantages that access to 27 member states brings.

Where would you go, looking for an intersection of easy to get with money and stability (which btw grants access to 27 member states)?

The most popular choices for Americans are EU, EU, EU, and EU.

Why? If the risk of collapse of these countries is less than perfectly correlated with the US, having extra passports still helps.

From Zweig, The World of Yesterday, it would appear that (as with lines of bank credit) travel documents are the sorts of things you'd like to have before you really need them.

As many HN readers know, the flexibility of startups comes from being able to achieve similar outcomes with different mixes of time, money, and staffing to larger entities.

Just as a thought-exercise for hackers (who delight in solving problems which do not exist in the real world, especially when they involve artificial constraints), can you figure out some good ways to leave your country assuming that you have (a) almost no time, (b) almost no money, or (c) almost no chance of expecting help —or even neutrality— from strangers?

Gives you access to the EU and those are easy to get I guess (schemes like invest some $x00k and get a passport)

Yes, but (especially) Greece and Italy aren't known for their stability in recent years.

As mentioned above, those are EU passport. If Italy becomes unstable you can still go to Germany or Austria for example.

If the situation in Italy actually got bad, the EU would suspend Italy's membership or at least many EU rights (such as freedom of movement) very quickly. As usual, everyone likes their neighbors until they don't.

If you're rich you're leaving Italy way before that, and member states wouldn't suspend rights of Italians already in their country.

As stated in the article, by getting a passport from any EU nation, you are free to travel to/live in/work in any EU country.

Neither Greece or Italy seem to be on the brink of a new civil war, nor do they have more owned guns than inhabitants (AFAIK). If anything, instability in these countries mostly means more opportunities for people with lots of money.

They don't have to live in Greece. The passport gets you access to the EU.