But the problem with austerity in the eurozone is more fundamental: policymakers are attempting to address a sovereign-debt crisis, though the real problem is a banking crisis. With Europe’s banking system triple the size and twice as leveraged as its US counterpart, and the ECB lacking genuine lender-of-last-resort authority, the sudden halt in capital flows to peripheral countries in 2009 created a liquidity-starved system that was too big to bail out.
但欧元区紧缩的问题更加基础：决策者在试图解决主权债务危机，尽管真正的原因是银行危机。欧洲银行系统规模是美国的三倍，杠杆是美国的两倍，欧洲央行也没有真正意义上的最后贷款人权力，因此2009年外围国家的资本突然断流导就造成了一个太大而救不了的流动性枯竭的系统。