IMF在希臘債務危機中未盡其職 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.
一個人駝着背坐在一堆文件旁，而另一個從華盛頓飛來的人在一旁看着他簽字。這些照片清楚表明了誰說了算：不是那個統治了印尼長達30年的強人蘇哈托(Suharto)，而是在這位印尼前總統在一週前似乎曾拒絕了的紓困協議上簽字時，交叉着手臂、俯視他的技術官僚。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.
希臘人對作爲其主要債權人的國際機構的敵意，讓很多亞洲人想起了自己在1997-98年的感覺——當時國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)要求遭受經濟危機打擊的國家推行緊縮和改革（上圖爲雅典大學外的反IMF標語——編者注）。這類要求必將導致壓力；如果你真的不喜歡緊縮，那麼就不要從IMF借錢。1998年當馬來西亞拒絕IMF的要求時，其政府有自由花光它能籌集到的所有資金。
