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.)
希腊人现在需要的是同情，但他们的欧洲伙伴却有必要拿出更好的应对之策。这就要求人们认真探讨造成希腊困境的更深层次原因。我认为“希腊是违约惯犯”这一被广为宣扬的说法并非原因所在，哈佛大学(Harvard)的肯尼斯•罗格夫(Kenneth Rogoff)在一份研究报告中也提出了与我相同的观点。该报告表明，希腊在过去百年间的违约记录并不突出（该国上世纪唯一一次违约发生在1931-32年，而且当时它绝非唯一陷入困境的国家）。