| Republicans lament a president who wants to imitate European economic models. But which party wants to imitate the austerity now being tried in many southern European countries. (And BTW, how is that working out for them?) |
| Contrast the still-shrinking economies of Europe with the stirrings of recovery in the United States, and you feel lucky to be an American and a beneficiary of President Obama’s stimulus.
And, as in the rest of Europe, austerity in the middle of recession has made matters worse — just as John Maynard Keynes predicted. [In Athens, s]chools, hospitals and social services are devastated. Staff at some halfway houses for the mentally ill haven’t been paid for six months, and electricity has been cut off. “And it’ll get worse,” predicted Dr. Cristos Panettas, the chief psychiatrist of the Psychiatric Hospital of Attica. One of the earliest recorded economic crises in the Western world came in Athens in the 5th century B.C. Fortunately, Athens was then led by the great Pericles, an early Keynesian who did not respond by slashing budgets. Instead, he ordered a public works initiative and built the Parthenon. Source: "In Athens, Austerity’s Ugliness" By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - NY Times - March 7, 2012 |
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