When the crisis began, many politicians and economists believed they could rely on technical instruments to slow it down. But very soon, Kenneth Rogoff, former head economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and his wife Carmen Reinhart argued in the book This Time Is Different that the meltdown we were facing shared one salient feature with previous global financial collapses: crippling levels of debt.
If we had listened to this advice, maybe there would not have been so much emphasis put on public spending, which didn't have its desired effect and what is worse, has left some states at the mercy of the markets. Now, Rogoff warns us that two or three hard years of focused debt repayment remain.
