But the depth of Greece’s woes should not obscure the fact that it is a small economy and, in many respects, an extreme, special case. No other country flouted the European Union’s budget rules the way Greece did, or has accumulated as large a public-debt burden, and no other EU country combines to the same extent a dysfunctional state and an uncompetitive private economy.
但希腊的苦况也不应掩盖一个事实：它只是一个小型经济体，而且在许多方面都是一个极端而特别的例子。没有任何一个国家胆敢如此漠视欧盟的预算规定，或是积累了如此巨大的公共债务负担，也没有一个欧盟国家能将一个无法运作的国家机器和一个缺乏竞争力的私营经济结合到如此恶劣的程度。