Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fastlizzy]

Austerity no good -- Socialism coming back -- Sarkozy will be gone!

And Wall Street will throw a fit! LMAO!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-02/krugman-wishes-he-was-wrong-amid-eu-austerity-backlash.html

Losing Balance

“You can’t do deficit reduction without the people” understanding and endorsing it, said Paul Martin, who as Canada’s finance minister through most of the 1990s turned a C$36 billion ($36 billion) shortfall into a surplus in three years. “Deficit reduction has to be balanced with growth and it’s pretty clear Europe (BEBANKS) has lost that balance.”

The debate has split policy makers, investors and academics alike as Europe pursued a cocktail of tax increases and spending cuts to beat a sovereign debt crisis that raged from Greece through Ireland and Portugal to the very heart of the single currency bloc.

In a camp that boasts fellow Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Krugman’s voice has been loudest in warning that deploying austerity in a slump is self-defeating as it deepens the economic pain and can generate even higher debt. For pulpits, the 59-year-old Princeton University professor has a regular New York Times op- ed and blog. A book, “End This Depression Now!” was published this week and is already among the bestsellers on Amazon.com Inc.’s U.S. website.