Yes, Europe really is in the throes of austerity

Yes, Europe really is in the throes of austerity

Apparently Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has had a change of heart. She used to be pro-austerity and now not so much.

"The CBO’s latest projections and the Reinhart-Rogoff debacle, she argued, ‘make it clearer than ever that now we need to focus above all else on our fragile economic recovery, and that the case for austerity in a time of economic weakness is simply wrong.’

To bolster the point, she had on hand former Treasury secretary and Harvard economics professor Larry Summers, as well as MIT economist and former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson. ‘International comparisons tend to confirm the view that excessively rapid fiscal consolidation has adverse impacts on economic performance,’ Summers wrote in prepared testimony. Johnson concurred, writing, ‘Immediate spending cuts would, by themselves, likely slow the economy.’

Countering them was Salim Furth, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. Furth argued that (a) tax increases harm the economy (b) spending cuts help economic growth and (c) permanent spending reform permanently increases growth. So far, so conservative. But the most interesting part of his testimony was Furth’s claim that most of Europe isn’t experiencing austerity at all."

This has been a myth from the right for a while and it's nice to see people call them out for it. And by people I mean Sen Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) who in his statement taught be a new word, "meretricious" meaning "apparently attractive but having in reality no value or integrity".

Krugman adds "false, misleading data and analysis — that’s SOP at Heritage".