Monday, February 20, 2012

Krugman almost backs down on US "austerity"

Amazing.

The whole article is big fun, but I got a meeting with the dean this morning (I'm in TROUBLE!!!!!) so let's just focus on one bit:

"Meanwhile, countries that didn’t jump on the austerity train — most notably, Japan and the United States — continue to have very low borrowing costs.... "

But then he said this:

"That’s true even in America, which has avoided full-fledged austerity at the federal level but has seen big spending and employment cuts at the state and local level."

So close, Paul, so close. Just take out "full-fledged" and "big" and add "over the last 18 months" at the end.





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Clearly you did not read the whole article, he also calls for federal assistance to local and state governments. How much money wasted on tenured professors could be spent to hire teachers who actually educate (and don't research obscure things 99% of the population will never read)? Clearly austerity has not worked in Europe. Perhaps its time to come out of the dusty idealism of the office and into reality? Amazing how American professors who are quite intelligent can know so little about whats really happening across the pond.