The debt dilemmas in Europe and the US prove yet again that elected officials will ignore long-run costs to achieve short-run benefits, and will act only when forced, in a doomed effort to circumvent the laws of economics and revoke the laws of arithmetic. And that implies an extended period of episodic economic disruption and political upheaval far beyond this summer’s debates on America’s debt ceiling and Europe’s distressed sovereign debtors.
除此之外，欧洲和美国的债务困境再次证明了这一事实：当选官员眼里只有短期利益，根本不会顾及长期成本，他们只有在被迫时才会采取行动，而做法一定与经济学和数学定律格格不入。这意味着经济动荡和政治剧变会持续很久，远不是今夏美国债务上限和欧洲受困主权债务人争论所能解决的。这些争论仅仅是持续斗争的第一阶段，其重大的政治和经济后果将会在未来多年内逐渐显现。