Recently, I was listening to a reporter talk about the European financial crisis. She said, “The problem is, the Europeans have borrowed too much.” For some reason, this statement just struck me as wrong. It wasn’t that it was untrue. It just missed the point. The problem isn’t the borrowing per se. The problem is the underlying reason governments borrow so much – the spending. This may seem like an insignificant or meaningless distinction. Spending, borrowing, it’s all connected. The issue here is accountability, and that is what makes the two different. It’s easy to blame nameless, faceless politicians in Washington or the capitals of Europe for the debt crises. They irresponsibly kept raising the debt limits, which got them into this mess. They’ve borrowed so much money that the prospect of paying it back seems impossible.