Sympathy for the Greeks is in short supply. But their European partners need to come up with a better response and this will require getting to grips with the deeper roots of Greece's predicament. I do not refer to the widely touted claim that Greece is a serial defaulter; the research paper (by Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff) that introduced the idea suggests that Greece's record over the past 100 years is not exceptional. (Its only default in the 20th century came in 1931-32, a time when it was scarcely the only one to run into difficulties.)
希臘人現在需要的是同情，但他們的歐洲伙伴卻有必要拿出更好的應對之策。這就要求人們認真探討造成希臘困境的更深層次原因。我認為“希臘是違約慣犯”這一被廣為宣揚的說法并非原因所在，哈佛大學(Harvard)的肯尼斯?羅格夫(Kenneth Rogoff)在一份研究報告中也提出了與我相同的觀點。該報告表明，希臘在過去百年間的違約記錄并不突出（該國上世紀唯一一次違約發生在1931-32年，而且當時它絕非唯一陷入困境的國家）。