I beg to be forgiven for blowing my own horn, but I am hardly the only one to keep shouting that this whole harsh austerity so brutally imposed by the likes of Olli Rehn and Wolfgang Schauble from the comfort and great distance of their cushy offices, is nothing at all to do with economics but everything to do with ideology.
However, blind, dogmatic ideology never leads to any good. And if it is one thing these gentlemen and ladies so doggedly pursuing this catastrophic agenda have achieved, it is bringing the European Union to the brink of disintegration, and certainly exacerbating the old hatreds of the continent which it had been thought had died.
In an article in today’s Guardian, describing how the Obama administration has achieved far better results through a Keynesian approach in reducing the deficit as well as the impressive initial results of Abenomics in Japan and how the Austerians have a lot to learn from this, ends with the following quote:
“Yet many will argue the Obama administration has done enough to show that Keynesianism works and it is only ideology that has hindered growth in the UK and Europe, not the availability of an oven-ready solution.”*
*My bold print.