中国网站品牌栏目（频道）
My comments:
Children in kindergarten are sometimes asked to literally sit on their hands while listening to the teacher in class. With their hands thus tied, the children won’t be able to move, much less play with their hands, let alone fighting with one another.
Hence, by extension and figuratively speaking, to sit on one’s hands suggests that someone just sits there, remains idle and does nothing in, say, a time of crisis when he should be taking action – doing something.
In the above example, Germany is accused of having been sitting on its hands, i.e. of inaction, when clearly it is expected to have done something to ease the euro crisis.
Related stories:
Making knee-jerk changes is not in our DNA
Bury the hatchet& have an ax to grind
本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。
About the author:
Zhang Xin（张欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.
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The Fed’s extraordinary intervention should impress upon the European Central Bank, as well as its paymasters in Germany, that it is high time it stopped sitting on its hands.
