Lost Decade, Here We Come – Paul Krugman

Lost Decade, Here We Come – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

More wisdom from Krugman:

A rough estimate right now is that cutting spending by 1 percent of GDP raises the unemployment rate by .75 percent compared with what it would otherwise be, yet reduces future debt by less than 0.5 percent of GDP.

So, as he adds:

The right thing, overwhelmingly, is to do things that will reduce spending and/or raise revenue after the economy has recovered — specifically, wait until after the economy is strong enough that monetary policy can offset the contractionary effects of fiscal austerity. But no: the deficit hawks want their cuts while unemployment rates are still at near-record highs and monetary policy is still hard up against the zero bound.

Utter folly posing as wisdom. Incredible.

And so scary because people do actually want to believe it is true.

And they’re in power.