> In a situation of such great uncertainty in the market, the government is the only source of demand big enough to make a dent. It must, of course, borrow the

> In a situation of such great uncertainty in the market, the government is the only source of demand big enough to make a dent. It must, of course, borrow the money and therefore increase its deficit by doing so, but that's a worthwhile thing to do when the alternative is default. So I don't totally understand what you're saying, but I think it's that they need to borrow a bunch more money, spend it to grow their economy, and then pay off their debt once their economy is doing better. The problem with that is that their finances are already terrible and no one really believes that they can pay back their debt. They're already paying very high rates on their new debt. If they tried to borrow even more, those rates would have to go even higher. So somehow they'll have to borrow enough that they can spend a lot to grow their economy and pay all the debt that's coming due, and then quickly recoup all the money they invested in their economy as even more debt comes due. So I guess you're arguing that the ECB should give them the cheap loans without them trying to balance their budget in the short term, and trusting that in the long term their economy will grow and they'll pay it back. The ECB doesn't seem to think that would be effective, and a lot of countries are not too happy about the bailouts even with austerity provisions.