The OECD says stop austerity measures now

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OK, they didn’t put it as bluntly as that, but this is from Reuters on Friday:

The world economy is proving weaker than expected in the second half and countries should consider pushing back austerity measures if that weakness persists, the OECD's Secretary General said on Friday.

"We had forecast a weakening of the recovery in the second half," the OECD's Angel Gurria told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna. "The question was how weak was it going to be. And I have to say I think it's been weaker than we thought."

"In the short term the weakness can be dealt with with the prolongation of some of the monetary accommodation in some countries," Gurria added.

"But if we see that there is a permanence of the weakness perhaps then one can delay the entry into force of the measures of fiscal consolidation," he said.

Or as Krugman puts it:

Future historians will marvel at the austerity madness that gripped policy elites in the spring of 2010. In a combination of blind panic and irrational exuberance, organizations from the ECB to the OECD suddenly abandoned everything we’ve learned, at bitter cost, about the economics of recessions, and raced to the conclusion that fiscal austerity was the way to go in the depths of a slump — indeed, that it would actually be expansionary.

And not just fiscal austerity: there were also widespread demands that interest rates rise in the face of falling inflation and high unemployment. The May OECD Economic Outlook exemplified the madness.

Now the OECD is coming as close as such organizations ever do to admitting that it was wrong.

What a strange trip it has been.

It’s a pity millions will suffer as a result of the delusion.


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