Well….I’m not sure if you’ve been following the events in Greece lately but I have an find them to be really, really interesting. what has happened in the election held over the weekend is that the conservative government has been thrown out to be replaced by a progressive one that has promised a wholesale change in how the country is run, starting with reversing the austerity that was forced on them by the EU and which is responsible for the Greek economy shrinking by more than 25% in the past year. But, the biggest target of this new administration is to get rid of the crony capitalism that has allowed the rich to not pay any taxes since before world war two and to operate to government for the benefit of all Greeks, not just those who have connections, money, or power. The people of Greece are just fed up with their 1% stealing everything and leaving nothing but crumbs for the rest of the country. Sound familiar? That’s why the title….if one country can make such a radical change, why can’t we? The same type of nonsense is happening here in the US with the rich taking all of the gains in the economy that have happened for the past 40 years and rigging the game so they will continue to take it all….I just hope that Greece was the first domino to fall to be followed by many more….the world needs to change…I just hope it happens in my lifetime….geez…
Tag Archives: austerity
Austerity is still nonsense…
Well…had to comment on the latest revelation that the supposedly academic paper by Rogoff and Reinhart that the repubs and conservatives across the globe have used to justify the focus on austerity around the world is a fraud…yeah, big surprise that the repubs would use a fraud to justify being pricks and hurting people but it is such an obvious fraud that it was discovered by a grad student at U Mass who found that they had made mistakes in their Excel formulas…yeah, I couldn’t believe it either…ruining countless lives across the world from an Excel error? No wonder they wouldn’t let anyone see their source data or how they came to their conclusions, but the more egregious thing is that they did one of the most common frauds in research…they willfully excluded data that they knew would have made their hypothesis false….these folks are just frauds and I want an apology from them and from Paul Ryan for all of the damage they’ve done by relentlessly pushing this crap since the start of the recession…isn’t this the last time we should ever have to hear from the idiot Ryan? Geez….
As I said, austerity doesn’t work…
Well…I have had a few posts here that dealt with the severe austerity that has been imposed by the IMF on Europe (not the personal austerity that prompted me to try to use coffee grounds twice with no success), and have been adamant that trying to grow any economy with austerity just doesn’t work. I have even been supported by a Nobel prize winner, Paul Krugman, but anyone that has had Econ 101 would recognize that going against Keynes is a bad bet. Now, the IMF has come up with a report on the imposed austerity that has sent Europe back into recession saying that the negative multiplier effect (yeah, I know kind of an arcane term) is much larger for budget cuts than they thought it was. What this report said was that the estimate of .6 Euro in lower growth was wildly wrong when the data was in….the negative multiplier actually was closer to 1.5 Euros per dollar of cuts….which means that the planners in Greece, Spain, and Portugal were misled by the IMF and the austerity hawks into tanking their economies just to protect the banks and the rich…how many more times are we going to allow the rich to rig the game and steal more and more from the middle class across the world? The real problem here is that the IMF is not even reading their own reports since they are still pushing the austerity nonsense here in the US when they know that it will result in making the economy worse…right now, with the pushback on austerity by the dems, our economy is still growing which should be the model across the world instead of the crushing of middle classes to keep the banks happy…geez…
I told you so….about Europe….
Well..in an eye opening set of events that have happened over the past quarter have proven Keynes and me right on the failure of the austerity programs in Europe to lead to economic growth. I do want to say “I told you so” just because Keynes predicted that cutting spending during a recession would lead to lower growth, but also because the repubs here in the US are advocating exactly the same policies here…which will lead to exactly the same results that we now see in Europe…that the economies like Spain and England, who have made some of the largest cuts, are falling back into the first double dip recession in 40 years. New predictions that I read somewhere today (it may have been in the Guardian or the Post) put the predictions of European growth with the austerity programs in place at -.3% to flat or no growth in comparison to the US’s predicted growth of 1.8 to 2.9%. This just shows the the general Keynesian rule of running deficits while in a recession or a slow growth period is absolutely necessary to jump start the economy and these can be paid for when the economy gets to sustainable growth. I just wish the repubs would open their econ 101 textbooks and read a little…if they can read, that is…geez….
Just a short one on economics…
Well…I had this idea after reading quite a few articles on what is happening in Europe with the bailout in Greece and the continued focus on austerity and cutting spending. All of the statistics that we see from studies there that cite lower growth and the distinct possibility that Europe will fall back into recession (Portugal and Spain are already there) do nothing but to confirm what Keynes said about spending cuts….that in a recessionary environment government should deficit spend to replace consumer spending and keep the economy growing. But, what all of the governments of Europe have done is listen to the fiction about the bond hawks and the crazy notion that cutting spending will make economies grow…what they have done with the massive contraction of government spending and the severe cuts to wages and benefits of the workers is to ensure that their economies will contract…forcing another round of austerity that will further feed this downward spiral. At least here in the US, we have made a half-hearted attempt at a stimulus and have not listened to the nonsense of the repubs that cutting spending will spur growth…this only works when the economy is growing at a sustainable pace and inflation is a threat….and that is not true here with only a .2% increase in prices on January…leaving an acceptable 2.4% inflation projected for the year…geez…
Is anyone surprised?
Well… I have to laugh at the surprise that has been coming out of some quarters in Europe that the economy there has slowed markedly over the past few months with the head of the IMF now saying the continent will go back into recession this year. What did they expect? When you slash spending and pay for workers, the result has always been slowing growth…just as Keynes postulated in his economic theories that have been so derided by the right here in the US. One of the things that everyone seems to be ignoring in the headlong rush to austerity across the globe is that you can never cut your way to growth….that cuts in spending and infrastructure investment will certainly mean years of slower growth instead of the robust growth that comes from deficit spending in a recession. I feel we have lost the ability to be objective in economics as the partisanship of politics and ideology have blinded us to what works in climbing out of recession…but, I think that is the aim of the repubs with their only stated goal over the last 3 years is to defeat Obama; no matter how much damage is done to the country…geez…
Nice job conservatives….austerity in a recession does not work…
Well…this is going to be a quick hitter for now….as the world has been gripped by the nonsense of the right across the world that austerity is the right path to take in a recession, we have started to see what the results of these programs are in Europe and they mirror the slowdown here in the US. I cant wait to say that Keynes is right and has always been right…the proper path to take in a recession is to continue to stimulate until the economy’s growth is self sustaining by the increase in demand that comes with rising incomes. It’s not really that complicated and it works every time when there are educated adults in charge….that are not so ideologically driven as the right is here….and since the austerity program was enacted first in Europe, the troubling slowdown in France and Germany that is happening now is what we can expect here, too…nonsense, nonsense, nonsense….thank you tea party….geez…