Mark Carroll's Journal

The ongoing infliction and talk of austerity has puzzled me. I don't know, for instance, if they really believed it the right medicine at first, but by the time they realized how wrong they were, and how big the multipliers are, they'd also so pinned their flag to the policy that they prefer saving face to relieving widespread misery. Or, if they knew all along and welcomed the excuse to cut welfare and public services, or even perhaps they still think it was actually the right thing to do because they live within a bubble of ignorant idiocy. I also have no idea why in the election campaign Labour let the Conservatives spin this narrative that, for instance, public finances were a much more significant cause of the crisis than private-sector debt, which of course mirrors the analysis of the Eurozone problem without having the element of fixed-currency balance-of-payments issues too.