关于欧元危机，要听大实话还得看看世界经济论坛（World Economic Forum）的印度年会！

    周一，我在孟买主持了一个小组讨论，探讨发展中国家间贸易量的增长。与会者表面上洋溢着一派乐观，但我却试着让讨论增加点火药味。

    我说，我是一个天生的悲观主义者。为讨论计，让我们为欧洲假设一个最糟情景或近乎最糟的情景。我不信欧元区能维持现状，继续以目前的形式存在下去。我认为欧洲将进入深度衰退，而不是短时的、浅层次衰退。果真如此，它将会对印度、中国以及其他所有发展中国家，特别是与中印这两个发展中大国的贸易量增长迅速的非洲国家，产生怎样的影响？

    我忘了与会者在小组会上是怎么回答的，好像没什么让人印象深刻的。真正有意思的是后来发生的事情，在一次茶歇中我和出席会议的两位德国高管展开了讨论。

    参加这类会议，往往是走廊里的聊天要远比正式讨论有趣得多。之所以这样，部分原因是因为商界人士或政客们往往认为走廊里的谈话不会见诸报端, 与记者的谈话尤其是这样。因此，我在此也得遵守这个规矩。我能说的是当时的这两位高管，一位是顾问，另一位是我得称之为准官方德国机构的负责人。

    两位仁兄对我当日的悲观言论略感不快。“你不知道吗？”这两人中的一个说，“我们（德国）救助希腊的成本远低于1989年柏林墙倒塌后重新统一东德的成本。”

    我差点被羊角面包噎住了。是的，我答道，我知道这一点。90年代中期，我就住在柏林，在那儿当记者。当年的经历对德国来说是个(在经济意义上)很痛苦的过程。但有一个问题，我委婉地问道，德国人接纳冷战期间被孤立和日渐贫困的同胞是美梦成真，不管付出的代价有多么沉重。但是，让德国人掏钱救助希腊对普通德国人可能是个噩梦，难道不是这样吗？

    他摆了摆手。不，不，他说，这事儿得管。他说，德国人知道欧元区成员的身份给他们带来了多少好处。如果没有这个身份，这位先生说，德国马克的汇率将比欧元高出50%或75%。“德国工业将会从地图上被抹去。”

    Leave it to the World Economic Forum's annual India conference to reveal some home truths about...the euro crisis.

    I was moderating a panel discussion here in Mumbai yesterday on the increasing amount of trade within the developing world, and amid an unrelenting stream of on-the-record optimism from the various panelists, I tried to spark things up a bit.

    Look, I said, I'm a born pessimist. For the sake of argument, let's assume a worst case or nearly worst-case scenario for Europe. I don't believe the euro zone can survive in its current form, and I think Europe is in for a deep recession, not a short shallow one. What would the impact of that be on India, China, and all the other developing countries, particularly in Africa, whose trade is rapidly expanding with developing world's two giants?

    Forget what the response on the panel was. It was unremarkable. What's interesting is what happened later, during a coffee break, when I got into a discussion with two senior German executives attending the meeting.

    The nature of these meetings is that the hallway chatter is always more interesting that the formal program. Part of the reason why is that, particularly when talking to journalists, the businesspeople or politicians tend to regard those conversations as off the record. So I'll abide by that here. One of the German execs was a consultant, and the other headed what I'll call a quasi-official German organization.

    They were slightly irritated by the pessimism I'd expressed earlier in the day. "Don't you realize," one of them said, "that the cost to us (Germany) of bailing out Greece is far less than it cost us to reintegrate East Germany after the wall came down in 1989?"

    I almost choked on my croissant. Yes, I replied, I am aware of that. I lived and worked in Berlin as a journalist in the mid 1990s, when that very painful (economically speaking) process was taking place in Germany. But doesn't that, I said politely, rather beg the question: Germany integrating their brethren, who'd been isolated and impoverished during the cold war, was a dream come true, whatever the cost. Germans, on the other hand paying to bail out Greece is, to average German, rather the opposite of a dream come true, is it not?

    He waved me off. No no, he said, it will be taken care of. The Germans, he said, understood how beneficial to them membership in the euro zone has been. Without it, the gentleman said, the value of the Deutschemark would be 50% or 75% higher than it is under the euro. "German industry would be wiped off the map."

    听到这里，我第二次被羊角面包噎住了。大多数经济学家都会同意这位朋友刚刚所说的话；但他似乎没有看到（可能性不大）或压根就不关心（这种可能性更大）事情的另一面。以欧洲第三大经济体意大利为例，这个有着庞大的现代化工业基地的国家正遭遇货币（欧元）之伤——欧元汇率高于意大利里拉在当前情况下应有的汇率。但欧元区成员身份意味着意大利不能实行本币贬值来缓解出口商压力。

    我委婉地反驳。我说，我担心的不是希腊，是意大利，全球第三大债券市场。周二早间，意大利债券收益率再度上行，突破7% （之后欧洲央行再度干预压低收益率）。大到不能倒，大到救不了。意大利的政府，即便是在新总理领导下，会推动实施足够的紧缩政策以避免违约吗？

    这时那位顾问开腔了，说出了他眼中的、可能令人不快的真相。这位顾问说，不行也得行，因为“粗俗点讲，我们捏住了【希腊人和意大利人的】 命根子。”

    没错——这就是当前欧洲危机的本质。德国，当然还有欧洲央行，相信 （或者更准确地说是希望），出任意大利和希腊新任总理的两位技术型官员——前欧盟委员马里奥•蒙蒂（意大利）和曾就读于麻省理工学院（MIT）的经济学家卢卡斯•帕帕季莫斯（希腊总理）将撇开政治考量，迫使愤怒的两国民众不管喜不喜欢，都要吞下他们开出的药丸。因为这是为了意大利和希腊好。而且，“我们捏住了他们的命根子。他们必须得按我们说的做。”

    还是让我们来看看几个重要事实吧：欧洲金融稳定基金（European Financial Stability Facility，简称EFSF）的资金仍然严重不足（有人听到“补充弹药”的呼声吗？）；由于葡萄牙、意大利、爱尔兰和希腊（PIIG）四国的主权债务敞口，欧洲银行业的资本金严重不足（根据一项保守估算，我看到仅最大的20家银行就需要3,700亿欧元的新股本）。而且就在周一，德国央行（Bundesbank）行长延斯•魏德曼告诉《金融时报》（Financial Times），欧洲央行无论如何都不会戴上“直升机伯南克”的螺旋桨帽子，充当“最后贷款人”。

    真相总是让人警醒，而与我谈话的两位先生所说的这些很大程度上代表了德国人对当前欧洲政治现实的看法。我们捏住了他们的命根子。

    我点点头，然后又一次尽可能礼貌地说，从欧洲历史来看，不管是近些年，还是再早一些，政治“现实”似乎总是“易燃易爆品”。

    说完我们互致午安。在这个孟买的炎热午后，这场谈话让人猛然清醒，欧元区的现实状况益发清晰了：这场危机的经济形势已经够恶劣了，而政治形势却有过之而无不及。

    Here was my 'choking on my croissant' moment number two. Most economists would agree with what my friend at the meeting had said; but he seemed either oblivious (not likely) or simply unconcerned (more likely) with the flip side of what he had just uttered. Italy, to take the third-largest economy in Europe, one with a sizeable and modern industrial base, is stuck with a currency -- the euro -- which is stronger than the old lira would be under current circumstances. But membership in the euro zone means Italy can't devalue to bring some relief to its exporters.

    I pushed back politely. Look, I said, it's not Greece I'm worried about. It's Italy. Third-biggest bond market in the world. Bond spreads this morning again heading over 7% (before the ECB intervened this to push them back down again.) Too big to fail, too big to save. Is the government, even one under a new Prime Minister, going to push through sufficient austerity to avoid a default?

    Now the consultant perked up, speaking what he too believes to be the unvarnished truth. They have to, he said, because "to be blunt about it, we have them [both the Greeks and the Italians] by the balls."

    And make no mistake – that, in essence, is where the European crisis stands. The Germans -- and the ECB along with them -- believe (perhaps hope is the better word) that two new technocratic prime ministers, former EU commissioner Mario Monti in Italy and MIT-trained economist Lucas Papademos in Greece, will cast politics aside and force angry populations in both countries to take their medicine, whether they like it or not. Because it's for their own good, you understand. And besides, "we have them by the balls. They have to do what we say."

    Let's set aside, for the moment, a couple of important facts: the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) remains woefully underfunded (anyone hear the sound of the 'bazooka?'); the European banks are vastly undercapitalized given their exposure to PIIG sovereign debt (the top 20 banks, according to one conservative estimate, I've seen need 370 billion euros of new equity.) And just yesterday, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann told the Financial Times that under no circumstances would the ECB don its Helicopter Ben propeller hat and act as "lender of last resort."

    Clarity is always refreshing, and what my interlocutor had said is very much the German perception of current political reality in Europe. We have them by the balls.

    I nodded and, again as politely as I could, said that given European history, both recent and not so recent, that "reality" seemed "politically combustible.''

    With that we bade each other good afternoon, a central point about the euro zone reinforced with a thud on a hot afternoon in Mumbai: The economics of this crisis are bad enough. The politics are worse.