Yet today, all we hear about is the profligacy of the Greek government and work-shy and uncompetitive Greek workers as the root cause of Europe's so-called sovereign debt crisis. Again, I stress "so-called" because although the debt-to-GDP ratios of European states have grown substantially since the start of the crisis, from an average of 70 percent in 2008 to 90 percent at the end of 2012, this is the result of the financial crisis that began in the United States in 2007 hitting European shores in 2008 and pushing the European economy into recession. Just as occurred in the United States, the private debt of highly leveraged financial institutions became the public debt of states for two reasons, one already familiar and one generated by the project of European monetary union itself.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 149