e authors had already drawn on two centuries of public-debt data for their seminal 2009 financial history, "This Time is Different". In their paper Ms Reinhart and Mr Rogoff sorted the figures into four categories of indebtedness and took average growth rates for each. They found that public debt has little

lead to at least partial default. This may be the eventual outcome in Greece, despite the recent rescue package put together by the IMF and the EU. Ms Reinhart and Mr Rogoff argue that the world is due for a wave of sovereign defaults, which are common after serious financial crises. Another undesirable mo