Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
François Fillon has announced that the budget (to be presented on Monday, 7th November) will include some new restrictions in spending.
And added apparently that "there is no alternative" to spending reduction.

You see, the previous round of spending reduction had failed to bring enough growth so we should obviously reduce more.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Sun Nov 6th, 2011 at 11:35:37 AM EST
The difference between "austerity didn't bring growth, let's have more of it" and "stimulus didn't bring growth, let's have more of it" is that the latter is based on actual science, as we knew the (US) stimulus was too small, before it was launched.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Sun Nov 6th, 2011 at 11:48:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Absolutely -actually there was no US stimulus, merely some federal spending that just about compensated local cuts. And targetted at entirely the wrong actors.

Besides, whatever the second round effects (and I for one believe that in a liquidity trap they are better for stimulus than for austerity), austerity clearly starts with a negative first round whereas stimulus' is always positive (hence the name "stimulus").
Pretty hard not to notice that when Government buys a service, a service must be produced.

So the burden of the proof has to be for austerity. And well, we're not even in "results seem positive but there is not enough evidence for statistical siginificance" territory there... Actually, we're even beyond "results appear negative but no statistical significance can emerge yet".

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Sun Nov 6th, 2011 at 01:04:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Earnest journalists explain that France needs to raise VAT in order to "bring us into line with Germany". There is no alternative to depressing domestic demand in order to...

Never mind.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Nov 6th, 2011 at 11:51:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series