New York Times columnists...

...David Brooks and Thomas Friedman think that national character is at the root of the current financial crisis in Europe.

According to Matthew Yglesias, writing in Slate (my emphasis):

David Brooks, for example, wrote on Dec. 2 that the underlying issue in the European debt crisis is that people in prosperous northern European countries "believe in a simple moral formula: effort should lead to reward as often as possible ... self-control should be rewarded while laziness and self-indulgence should not." Over the summer, while the crisis was in a less-acute phase, Thomas Friedman informed us that the key question was why can't a Greek learn to be like a German. "Germans are now telling Greeks: 'We'll loan you more money, provided that you behave like Germans in how you save, how many hours a week you work, how long a vacation you take, and how consistently you pay your taxes.' " 

Not so fast, says Yglesias (my emphasis):

It's true that Germans and Greeks work very different amounts, but not in the way you expect. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average German worker put in 1,429 hours on the job in 2008. The average Greek worker put in 2,120 hours. In Spain, the average worker puts in 1,647 hours. In Italy, 1,802. The Dutch, by contrast, outdo even their Teutonic brethren in laziness, working a staggeringly low 1,389 hours per year.