The news that the wrong headed and, utterly failed polices of austerity are now officially dead in Europe gives me hope that “austerity” will be recognized for the fraudulent bullshit that it is here in America as well.
Now that Keynesian thinking and sanity is being restored, and Europe is no longer tied to a economic policy that was based on Rogoff and Reinhart’s spreadsheet error, European (and hopefully American) companies should be able to get on with growing and adding jobs.
That said, the GOP is still wholly committed to our current President’s failure. So I would expect the Republicans to continue to extol the virtues of an economic ideology that a) is a proven failure, and b) redefines success as the infliction of pain for pain’s sake. Similarly, modern Democrats have spent the past twenty years being wrong about “trickle down” – so I don’t expect then to turn on a dime. Tom Carper and Chris Coons certainly seem to be getting something out of being flat wrong on the scourge of the debt and the looming threat to our continued existence that is Social Security. Why rock the boat?
Still, at long last, it is nice to see articles like this one from cepr.net:
Austerity Advocates Have Been Wrong About Everything
- And these….
- Europe’s Self-Defeating Austerity (usnews.com)
- Stimulus working in Japan. Austerity failing in Europe. Will economists learn? by @DavidOAtkins (digbysblog.blogspot.com)
- Evidence Shows European Austerity Was a Colossal Mistake (usnews.com)