Ed wrote:
>Where is Keynes when you need him?
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/europe-finds-austerity-a-tight-fit/2012/05/03/gIQAVIG0zT_story.html
>From the article:
The lesson of 2008 was that unregulated finance ends in
disaster. The lesson of the years since is that austerity in a
time of economic weakness not only perpetuates that disaster but
makes it worse. The world, one might think, would have learned
this lesson from the 1930s; Germany, at least, should have. Alas,
it apparently has to be relearned, painfully, again and again.
Over at the NYT, Paul Krugman opines:
And the takeover of half our political spectrum by the 0.01
percent [1] is, I'd argue, also responsible for the degradation of our
economic discourse, which has made any sensible discussion of what
we should be doing impossible.
Disputes in economics used to be bounded by a shared understanding
of the evidence, creating a broad range of agreement about
economic policy. To take the most prominent example, Milton
Friedman may have opposed fiscal activism, but he very much
supported monetary activism to fight deep economic slumps, to an
extent that would have put him well to the left of center in many
current debates.
[snip]
...the real structural problem is in our political system, which
has been warped and paralyzed by the power of a small, wealthy
minority. And the key to economic recovery lies in finding a way
to get past that minority's malign influence.
http://www10.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/opinion/krugman-plutocracy-paralysis-perplexity.html
Dunno if PK's analysis applies to Europe or not but I easily imagine so.
- Mike
[1] Given 300 million population and -- lets say -- 3 people per
houshold, 0.01% is just 10,000 housholds in the US. But there are
a lot of billionaires in other countries, too, some of them US
expatriots presumably evading US taxes. Something has to support
the fulminating growth of casinos in Macau, eh?
OTOH, here in (what many central Canadians think of as) Canada's
hillbilly Ozarks, in my local market town, 5 auto dealerships have
recently built brand new, flashy buildings or had major structural
and cosmetic upgrades to existing ones. What should I infer from
that?
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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