In Athens, Austerity’s Ugliness

[girl gone mad]

3. Don't get too comfortable.

The neoliberals are firmly in control of economic policy in the U.S. as well as Europe. Austerity will come to America. Ireland, Spain and Greece are just guinea pigs. Washington is owned and the oligarchs want to see suffering here.

Don't mistake the horrendous bank bailouts and the minor stimulus program full of misguided tax cuts and crony pork-barrel spending for genuine Keynesian policy. Aside from the payroll tax cut, we didn't get anything Keynesian, certainly nothing on the order of the deficit spending required, and now we're just about back to where we were in 2007. Except our banks are more fragile and our middle class is even poorer.