Austerity not to blame for Greece's poor export performance

The Greek economy is beating records - unfortunately negative ones. The recession has now been deeper, and lasted longer, than any other comparable case one can think of. Only the Great Depression of the 1930s had similar costs in terms of output and employment.

But during that period the entire world experienced a deep recession and protectionism restricted commerce. Today the global environment is very different.

Greece's closest economic partners in the euro area have been growing for over three years, the US for much longer and the world economy as a whole never stopped growing, even during the severe, but short-lived, recession of 2009.

The peculiarity of the Greek case comes into much sharper focus if one compares it with the Asian crisis, or other program countries in the euro area. In all these cases, the countries involved faced a sudden stop in their...