On May 2, 2:36Â*pm, ПЈö'Донован wrote:
“While the US is focused on its own domestic dramas, Europe as the
Economist (UK) Â*puts it, ‘is bleeding out.’ Silently, exsanguinating
below the fold, but bleeding all the same.�

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freee.../euro-crisis-5

Of all the zombie ideas that have been reanimated in the wake of the
global financial crisis, austerity is the most dangerous. austerity
created the disasters of the 1930s, and contributed to the descent of
the world into global war. European austerity policies have prevented
any recovery from the crisis of 2009, while rescuing and protecting
the banks and financial institutions that created the crisis. An
essential guide for anyone who wants to understand the current
depression.

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/genera.../Political/?vi...

Austerity
The History of a Dangerous Idea
Mark Blyth

ISBN13: 9780199828302ISBN10: 019982830X Hardcover, 304 pages
Mar 2013, In Stock
Price:
$24.95 (02)

Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded
in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made
the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of
draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the financial crisis. We
are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to
tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt
came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct
result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the
broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was
rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating
it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the
burden on the taxpayer.

That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the
policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore
competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to
political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous
idea. First of all, it doesn't work. As the past four years and
countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it
makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it
simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is
shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the
Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by
the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the
Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the
arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than
expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead
economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases
in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional
wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we recognize
austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.
Features
• Tackles one of the most important topics in world
politics and
economics in clear, trenchant language
• One of the only accounts that successfully links
together the
political and economic aspects of the current crisis.
Reviews
"Austerity is an economic policy strategy, but is also an ideology and
an approach to economic management freighted with politics. In this
book Mark Blyth uncovers these successive strata. In doing so he
wields his spade in a way that shows no patience for fools and
foolishness." 
--Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N.
Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science University of
California, Berkeley
"Of all the zombie ideas that have been reanimated in the wake of the
global financial crisis, austerity is the most dangerous. Mark Blyth
shows how austerity created the disasters of the 1930s, and
contributed to the descent of the world into global war. He shows how
European austerity policies have prevented any recovery from the
crisis of 2009, while rescuing and protecting the banks and financial
institutions that created the crisis. An essential guide for anyone
who wants to understand the current depression." 
--John Quiggin,
author of author of Zombie Economics
"Most fascinating is the author's discussion of the historical
underpinnings of austerity, first formulated by Enlightenment thinkers
Locke, Hume and Adam Smith, around the (good) idea of parsimony and
the (bad) idea of debt. Ultimately, writes Blyth, austerity is a
'zombie economic idea because it has been disproven time and again,
but it just keeps coming.' A clear explanation of a complicated, and
severely flawed, idea." 
-- KIRKUS REVIEW
"Mark Blyth's fascinating analysis guides the reader through 'the
historical ideology which has classified debt as problematic.' In
doing so he outlines the relevance of century-old debates between the
advocates and opponents of laissez faire, and explains why, after a
brief reemergence in 2008-09, and despite the lack of evidence
supporting austerity, the world turned its back on Keynesian
policies." 
--Robert Skidelsky, author of Keynes: The Return of the
Master
"Among all the calamities spawned by the global financial crisis, none
was as easily avoidable as the idea that austerity policies were the
only way out. In this feisty book, noted political scientist Mark
Blyth covers new territory by recounting the intellectual history of
this failed idea and how it came to exert a hold on the imagination of
economists and politicians. It is an indication of the sorry state of
macroeconomics that it takes a political scientist to expose so
thoroughly one of the economics profession's most dangerous
delusions." 
--Dani Rodrik, Rafiq Hariri Professor of International
Political Economy, The John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University
"Essential reading... The economy is much too important to leave to
economists. We need to understand how ideas shape it, and Blyth's new
book provides an excellent starting point."--Washington Monthly
"An important polemic... valid and compelling."--Lawrence Summers,
Financial Times 

"splendid new book". Martin Wolf, Financial Times
Product Details
304 pages; 5-1/2 x 8-1/2; ISBN13: 978-0-19-982830-2ISBN10:
0-19-982830-
X
About the Author(s)
Mark Blyth is Professor of International Political Economy at Brown
University. He is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas
and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century.