"The Age of Austerity Is Here"

Talking Points Memo:

Are reports of his death exaggerated?

Whatever the outcome of Thursday's projected House vote on Speaker Boehner's debt plan, this process has already ended the political life of one prominent member of the Washington establishment: John Maynard Keynes.

True, Keynes died in 1946. But his ghost hovered over America's economic debate until pretty much Monday night. At that time, in their ostensibly dueling speeches, both President Obama and House Speaker Boehner embraced the language of "austerity" and performed an unwitting exorcism...

On Monday night even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - for so long demonized by the right as the smiling face of big government - released a pro-austerity statement. That's a clear sign which way the wind is blowing.

Read the entire TPM piece by Thomas Lane HERE for a good, relatively brief backgrounder on our current political - and economic - quagmire.

Update note: A commenter at TPM points out,  "The death of Keynes is due almost solely to a quasi-religious movement of free-market fundamentalist that is bank-rolled by billionaires. It is not based on data. It is not based on the dominant views in the academia, most economists and others social scientists believe that austerity in a recession is foolish...(T)his is something much closer to the victory of zealous religious movement with very powerful friends. The reason they offer the same solution to every problem--tax cuts and deregulation--is that they have larger social goals that have nothing to do with empirical facts or what is needed to help America. It is about changing America to match their Ayn Rand gospel."


Via Balloon Juice