So, why, then, do European governments play the great bait and switch and then blame it all on sovereigns that have spent too much? Basically, it’s because in a democracy you can hardly come clean about what you are doing and expect to survive. Imagine a major European politician trying to explain why a quarter of Spain needs to be unemployed, and why the whole of periphery Europe needs to sit in a permanent recession just to save a currency that has only existed for a decade.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 242