Only a year ago, at the IMF’s annual meeting in Washington, DC, senior staff were telling anyone who would listen that the whole European sovereign-debt panic was a tempest in a teapot. Using slick PowerPoint presentations with titles like “Default in Today’s Advanced Economies: Unnecessary, Undesirable, and Unlikely,” the Fund tried to convince investors that eurozone debt was solid as a rock.
一年前，在IMF华盛顿年会上，只要你愿意听，高级官员就会告诉你，整个欧洲主权债务危机纯属小题大做。IMF制作了精美的PPT，打着《今日发达经济体的违约：没有必要、不受欢迎、断无可能》之类的标题，试图让投资者相信，欧元区坚如磐石。