Greece is at the eye of the storm gathering over the world economy, and threatening to tear the eurozone apart. But should the rest of us be sorry for Greece, or angry? Here, two experts present opposing arguments for and against sympathy.

For almost two years, the eurozone has been stricken with a potentially fatal malaise. Three crises have intermingled and reinforced each other: Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain face crises of excessive debt (public and private); those same countries suffer from anemic economic growth; and much of the European Union is afflicted with a banking crisis.

Most events have an official – or at any rate widely accepted – narrative. In much of Europe, the narrative of the eurozone crisis goes something like this: this is not a crisis of the eurozone, which has been a success.