Paul Krugman last week on Paul Ryan's SOTU response, Their Own Private Europe. He keyed off of Ryan lumping Greece, Ireland and the UK together.
"The lesson of the Irish debacle, then, is very nearly the opposite of what Mr. Ryan would have us believe. It doesn’t say ‘cut spending now, or bad things will happen’; it says that balanced budgets won’t protect you from crisis if you don’t effectively regulate your banks — a point made in the newly released report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which concludes that ‘30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation’ helped create our own catastrophe. Have I mentioned that Republicans are doing everything they can to undermine financial reform?"
"The British economy, which seemed to be recovering earlier in 2010, turned down again in the fourth quarter. Yes, weather was a factor, and, no, you shouldn’t read too much into one quarter’s numbers. But there’s certainly no sign of the surging private-sector confidence that was supposed to offset the direct effects of eliminating half-a-million government jobs. And, as a result, there’s no comfort in the British experience for Republican claims that the United States needs spending cuts in the face of mass unemployment."
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