Republicans pushing shitty economic policies? The hell you say!

Hey @1 hows all those reading skills you brag about working out for you?
(most of Europe has right wing governments and all of the ones going south are pressured by the very very very much right wing IMF rules of "free market adjustments" via the EU).
Where I live we have a right wing government (who got voted in by adopting the catch phrases of the left wing) happily dismantling that "socialist liberal welfare state thingy". Our (Swedens) economy, that looked good at first, is now slowly creaping south. The idiots even want us to join in the monetary part of the EU even though its dragging every single membership country down with it.

Conservatives just want austerity for the poor and middle class to keep them continuously struggling. That way, they'll be less educated and informed about the massive corruption present in the conservative leadership and corporate world.

When people have their basic needs met, they start questioning where the vile shit is happening. Conservatives don't want that. They want their greed and corruption obscured.

yeah, just be sure to keep all the government debt off the balance sheet when considering your "winner"

The solution should be a more redistributive tax system but one spending is sustainable. Right now, its not. If (when) interest rates go up, interest on the debt could crowd out discretionary spending. Or we could go back to monetizing debt to pay bills, but $10 gas is not popular with the people.

Raw economic data is clearly dangerous in the hands of a slog blogger. "Europe had a bad quarter. That must mean Paul Krugman is right." It's like listening to my 5 year old.

A worthwhile discussion of austerity in Europe and Greece in particular by Michael Hudson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ7m-gXzQ…

haha. if only it was so easy to directly link austerity, or the lack thereof, to GDP. there is so much more going on.

I would guess that the implosion of Greece has a lot more to do with the bad GDP numbers than any "right" or "left" economic policies. No amount of austerity, or its reverse, is going to solve the problem of Greece.

@7, got something in writing? Talking is a terrible way to convey information.

Wow, so if one of the largest spenders in an economy (like, say, a government) stops spending, the economy shrinks? Shocking.

@10, Transcript here: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?opti…

Interesting article about the Euro and the various European countries:

Too Late for the Euro?

Which would be better for a country's economy as a whole and lower/middle classes in particular:

Spending >$1 trillion on a war of choice, with >$2 trillion in additional future obligations to wounded soldiers and their families?

Or spending $1 trillion to put 4kW of grid-tied solar panels on the roofs of 40 million homes (at current prices), spinning lots of meters backward, creating an instant market boost for plug-in hybrid cars, obviating the need for 160 gigawatts of coal-nuclear-hydro plants, and (if you can manage to not buy the solar panels from China) a buttload of manufacturing jobs?

Germany, for one, knows the answer.

Asdfgh, you should register. That was a good comment at 16 and folks often don't see unregistered comments.

Republicans are huge fans of Keynesian stimulus schemes, and have been since Reagan. They just insist that government efforts to stimulate aggregate demand must always take the form of tax cuts.

17 - Don't you have some magazine stands to be defacing and white supremacist propaganda to leave in your tracks?

The euro is only worth 38 cents.

@ 21 - So you're claiming culpability for the magazine stand and the white nationalist leaflets then? You heard it here folks.

austerity is about the rich consolidating their gains at the expense of everyone else. it is fantastic at achieving that goal. and that is what it is now doing in europe.

@21 - The current European debt crisis was caused primarily by bailing out financial institutions as a result of the global financial crisis (remember that?), combined with the world-wide economic slowdown that followed, which reduced revenues.

Explain how letting the financial sector do what ever it wants, even if it results in destroying the economy, is a liberal value. The only one I hear crying about too much regulations on banks are conservatives.

I appreciate Fnarf@9 pointing out the danger of ignoring confounding factors, but I am actually willing to grant that the stimulus is probably short-term net positive for the U.S. Some things to keep in mind:

1. What one would expect from standard models is that stimulus would be short-term positive, but long-term negative. This is indeed what the CBO predicts (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011…). There is an amusing exchange where Doug Elmendorf, the head of the CBO, gets confused about this during congressional testimony (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h_rDrd97…).

2. As Proteus@19 points out, since not just the infrastructure and benefit spending beloved of Democrats but also the tax cuts beloved of Republicans count as Keynsian stimulus, the political implications aren't so obvious.

3. Many of those European countries don't have much choice. If the bond markets won't lend you money and your central bank won't print you money, you don't get to choose stimulus even if you want to.

@22: You forgot your sarcasm tag.

@21: Just because nobody wants to respond to your poorly-worded nonsensical fairy tale doesn't mean that it reflects reality. I could leave a pile of cakes in a boxing ring, but just because no challengers appeared to defeat it wouldn't make it the boxing champion of the world.

IMF research team on austerity: "the evidence from the past is clear: fiscal consolidations typically have the short-run effect of reducing incomes and raising unemployment. [..] In economists’ jargon, fiscal consolidations are contractionary, not expansionary."

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fand…