欧债危机解药：选通胀，弃紧缩

    如果德国公众不支持免除债务，就需要另寻办法。最显而易见的就是印钞，通过通胀来化解部分坏账。今年早些时候，欧洲央行（European Central Bank）为陷入困境的众多欧洲银行提供了1万亿欧元的低息贷款，避免了一场迫在眉睫的危机。如今，欧洲央行行长马里奥•德拉吉（我心中的2012年度人物人选）需要再度打开资金龙头来灭火（确保即使希腊退出欧元区，也不会殃及整个欧元区），从而应对更大范围的债务问题。他可以效法美联储（Fed）购买公债；可以恢复央行对商业银行的低息贷款计划，作为间接的宽松货币政策；也可以为欧洲救助基金提供贷款，为进一步的债务重组提供资金（要做到这一点，救助基金必须要获得银行牌照。)

    这些政策如果得以贯彻，最终将导致欧元贬值、通胀上升，但这些都是有益的。历史证明，通胀（而不是紧缩）才是应对如山债务的最好办法。

    译者：早稻米

    If the German public won't countenance forgiving debtors, another solution will have to be found. The obvious one is printing money and inflating away some of the bad debt. In extending a trillion euros of cheap loans to troubled European banks earlier this year, the European Central Bank averted an immediate crisis. Now Mario Draghi, the ECB president and my pick for 2012's Person of the Year, needs to turn the money hose back on to douse the fire that will ensue if Greece crashes out of the euro and to tackle the broader debt problem. He could mimic the Fed and buy government bonds. He could resume his bank-lending program, which is an indirect form of quantitative easing. And he could issue loans to the EU bailout funds, which would use them to finance further debt restructurings. (For that to happen, the bailout funds would have to be granted a banking license.)

    Such policies, if they were adhered to, would eventually lead to a fall in the euro and a rise in inflation, which would be all to the good. History demonstrates that inflation, rather than austerity, is the best way to deal with a debt mountain.