To think that two and two are four/And neither five nor three/The heart of man has long been sore/And long ’tis like to be.” Anybody thinking about the economy needs to recall these lines by the English poet AE Housman. Things must add up. The question is how. People responsible for large economies cannot ignore this. A tragedy of the eurozone, especially of Germany’s role within it, is that the transition to thinking about how income and expenditure add up at eurozone and global levels has so far failed to occur.
“To think that two and two are four/And neither five nor three/The heart of man has long been sore/And long ’tis like to be.（大意：想到二加二等於四/既不是五也不是三/人的心已經痛了很久/還會痛很久。）」任何思考經濟問題的人都需要回憶一下英國詩人A•E•豪斯曼(AE Housman)的這句詩。數字必須對上。問題是如何對上。爲大型經濟體負責的那些人不能忽視這點。歐元區（特別是德國在歐元區的作用）的悲劇在於，人們迄今未能轉變思維，站在歐元區及全球層面上思考收入和支出如何對上。