Pettis points out that Germany (among others) has learned very little from the crisis of the Great Depression. I expressed these same feelings in my Remembrance Day post.
According to Pettis, politicans (and from my perspctive most acadmeics) do not appreciate that these one sided austerity adjustments are going to destroy their middle class and threaten the fabric of their democracies.
But the times they are a changing.