德国化解欧元危机的信心从何而来

    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."