As if it wasn't apparent to anyone other than hard-core ideologues - and politicians who should know better running scared - the evidence increases that deficit mania in a recession is little more than a recipe for making things even worse.
John Cassidy at The New Yorker, offers his perspective on the evidence from Britain that an agenda of austerity - i.e. spending cuts and fixation on short-term deficit reduction - is utterly wrong-headed in a deep recession:
With all the talk of a possible double-dip recession in the U.S. economy—here’s my own little contribution—it’s surprising (and somewhat scandalous) that more attention isn’t being paid to what is happening in Britain, where a second economic downturn began last fall and shows few signs of relenting.
About a year ago, with the British economy seemingly recovering fairly well from the financial crisis of 2008, David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal coalition embarked on a vigorous policy of deficit reduction, raising taxes and cutting government spending in an effort to balance the budget by 2015. How this experiment in pre-Keynesian economic policy turns out obviously has important implications for the fiscal debate on this side of the Atlantic.
So far, the results aren’t looking very favorable.
