Paul Krugman: What's It All About Then

Simon Wren-Lewis writes with feeling about the “austerity deception“; what sets him off is a post that characterizes the whole austerity debate as being about “big-state” versus “small-state” people.

Wren-Lewis’s point is that only one side of the debate saw it that way. Opponents of austerity in a depressed economy opposed it because they believed that this would worsen the depression — and they were right.