Niall Ferguson: Austerity Works
Niall Ferguson is a Newsweek columnist and Harvard professor.
To judge by media coverage, President Obama’s whistle-stop European tour was largely recreational. In Dublin he reenacted the time-honored tradition of discovering his Irish roots. In London he took part in what felt like Royal Wedding: The Sequel.
Meanwhile, in Washington, business went on as usual. The government continued borrowing money despite having breached its legal debt ceiling. Senate Democrats voted down Paul Ryan’s plan to reduce the cost of Medicare, despite having no credible plan of their own to stabilize the debt.
Yet Obama’s travels could have been a timely opportunity to learn from Europe’s fiscal mistakes.
To American commentators, notably New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the lesson is clear. “In Europe,” he wrote last week, “the pain caucus has been in control for more than a year, insisting that sound money and balanced budgets are the answer … [But] Europe’s troubled debtor nations are … suffering further economic decline thanks to those austerity programs.” Elsewhere, Krugman has repeatedly badmouthed the British government for trying to cut its deficit.
It’s certainly true that the economies of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal—the three countries committed to austerity programs as conditions for European and International Monetary Fund bailouts—have shrunk over the past year. The unemployment rate is above 10 percent in all three. Meanwhile, the U.K. economy is growing sluggishly. But to infer from this that the United States can postpone serious attempts at fiscal stabilization would be completely wrong—and deeply dangerous....