IMF在希腊债务危机中未尽其职 Someone needed to speak truth to Europe

One man sat hunched over the papers that the other had flown in from Washington to watch him sign. The photographs made clear who was in charge: not the strongman who had ruled Indonesia for three decades, but the cross-armed technocrat who looked down as President Suharto inked a bailout agreement that he had seemed to reject a week earlier.

一个人驼着背坐在一堆文件旁，而另一个从华盛顿飞来的人在一旁看着他签字。这些照片清楚表明了谁说了算：不是那个统治了印尼长达30年的强人苏哈托(Suharto)，而是在这位印尼前总统在一周前似乎曾拒绝了的纾困协议上签字时，交叉着手臂、俯视他的技术官僚。

The Greeks’ hostility towards the International institutions that are their country’s chief creditors reminds many Asians of how they felt in 1997-98, when the International Monetary Fund demanded austerity and reforms in countries battered by economic crisis. Such demands are bound to cause strain; if you really dislike austerity, do not borrow from the IMF. When Malaysia declined to do so in 1998, its government was free to spend all the money it could raise.

希腊人对作为其主要债权人的国际机构的敌意，让很多亚洲人想起了自己在1997-98年的感觉——当时国际货币基金组织(IMF)要求遭受经济危机打击的国家推行紧缩和改革（上图为雅典大学外的反IMF标语——编者注）。这类要求必将导致压力；如果你真的不喜欢紧缩，那么就不要从IMF借钱。1998年当马来西亚拒绝IMF的要求时，其政府有自由花光它能筹集到的所有资金。