I grew up in a middle-class family, the first to go to college full-time and the first to earn a Ph.D. The economic policies of the last 40 years have reduced the middle class's security, and this blog is a small contribution to reversing that.
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We've gotten to another point where it's hard for me to turn on the TV. I know this will have to change, but for now I'll go back to one of my favorite topics, the fate of Ireland under austerity.
As I suggested might happen, Ireland in its 2015-2016 immigration statistical year (May-April) was finally able to end its net emigration. According to the Central Statistical Office's August report, 3100 more people came to Ireland than left during 2015-2016. This was the first time since 2008-2009 that Ireland had net in-migration. Still, among the Irish themselves, net emigration continued in 2015-2016, with 10,700 more leaving than returning.
The unemployment rate declined again from Q3 2015 to Q3 2016, from from 9.3% to 8.0%. The monthly unemployment rate for January 2017 dropped to 7.1%. And yet...
While Q3 2016 employment increased by 57,500 to 2,040,500, this remains 5.6% below its Q1 2008 peak of 2,160,681. Things are finally getting better, but Ireland is still not all the way back.
By contrast, currency-devaluing, banker-jailing Iceland long ago passed its old employment peak (create your own table), which was 181,900 in August 2008. Employment reached a low point of 163,900 in February 2011, first surpassed the old peak in February 2015 (182,900), and in December 2016 stood at 194,400, or 6.9% above the pre-crisis peak.
Oh, and Iceland's unemployment rate? A seasonally adjusted 2.9% in December 2016, and only 2.6% without seasonal adjustment.
Maybe one day we'll talk about the Celtic Tiger again. But Ireland, hamstrung by its inability to devalue and by harsh austerity measures, shows lingering weakness, masked by emigration, to this day. Iceland, by contrast, is the one looking like a Nordic Tiger.
Ireland remains, in some circles, a poster child for austerity's success: It paid off its bailout loan early! It regained its 2007 Gross Nation Income per capita in 2014! Unemployment is only 8.9%! Don't believe the hype.
Paul Krugman recently pointed out that Ireland's employment performance continues to be dismal, especially in comparison with currency-devaluing, banker-prosecuting Iceland. Iceland's employment now exceeds its pre-crisis peak by about 2.5% whereas Ireland is still, 8 years later, 8% below its peak. More specifically, Irish employment peaked in Q1 2008 at 2,160,681; in Q3 of 2015, the figure was still only 1,983,000.
Not only that, but in 2014-2015 (May-April), Ireland continued with net emigration, as 11,600 more people left than came to Ireland. This was a substantial improvement of 9800 over the April 2014 figure, but still the trend is that Ireland is exporting unemployment literally.
Things are obviously getting better in Ireland for those who remain behind. Jobs are being created, and the number of unemployed has fallen. The April 2016 immigration report (the data are only reported once a year) may finally see an end to net emigration. But Ireland is 80% of the way to a lost decade, and isn't out of the woods yet.
Paul Krugman analyzes the debacle in Greece. Although Greeks voted barely a week ago to reject the bailout terms offered by the EU, which called for uninterrupted austerity, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras proposed to the EU to accept almost all of the terms if there was some true financial relief. Instead, what the European Union, spurred by Germany, proposed today demanded all of the pain, and none of the gain that Tsipras sought. Indeed, Germany has essentially demanded regime change in Greece, even though Tsipras only came to office in January. As Krugman says, "It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept."
The Germans, it would appear, have decided to push Greece from the eurozone. But demanding an end to Greek sovereignty and austerity as far as the eye can see is simply evil. Moreover, it negates the long-successful stand of European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi that the ECB would do "whatever it takes" to keep the eurozone intact. The ECB's reputation would be damaged greatly should crisis recur in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc., now that the world knows the ECB will not do "whatever it takes." This is a recipe for a new recession in Europe spreading from the EU periphery.
The German demands are particularly "grotesque," as Krugman says, when you consider that Greece has already endured 25+% unemployment for three years (see chart). This is an unemployment rate that the United States never saw even at the height of the Great Depression in 1933, when it peaked at 24.9%.
source: tradingeconomics.com
However, I believe Krugman's argument actually overlooks an important point. He writes:
But still, let’s be clear: what we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line.
His point is that eurozone membership has removed Greece's ability to exercise monetary policy autonomy and respond to its specific conditions, including via currency devaluation. Indeed, there can be no doubt that monetary union was flawed from the start. But Krugman overestimates the ability of devaluation to fix an economic crisis. At the same time, he underestimates the ability of creditors to destroy a government whose economic policies they disapprove of.
The mega-example of this, of course, is the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. Mexico, Brazil, and all the other victims of this crisis (caused primarily by the U.S. Federal Reserve cranking up interest rates to astronomical levels in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which in turn caused an unprecedented rise in the value of the U.S. dollar and a global recession) were "bailed out" by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to prevent the collapse of creditor banks in the United States, but were subject to strict austerity, with the same results we've seen in the EU. Indeed, in virtually every Latin American country income per capita was lower in 1990 than at the start of the crisis in 1982, giving rise to the term "lost decade of development" to describe these events.
Supposedly, the IMF learned its lesson after the Asian financial crisis that austerity packages didn't work. Krugman has argued this many times (one example here). Indeed, the IMF has seemed to be more of a voice of sanity in the current crisis than in either the Latin American or Asian crises. Yet, in the endgame of the Greek crisis, this seems to have fallen away, with the IMF going along with the EU on Greek austerity. Something is seriously wrong here.
But there is another important example to mention, where the IMF was not involved. This, too, was a result of the Fed-caused global recession, this time in France. After Francois Mitterrand and the Socialist Party swept to power in 1981, among the government's many policy changes was an attempt at Keynesian stimulus. However, this was met by massive capital flight. The problem was that the French franc was losing so much value that the government had to reverse its policies. For example, the franc was 4.6453 to the dollar in January 1981, but fell to 8.0442 by August 1983, 9.3041 by September 1984, and 10.0933 in February 1985. The takeaway is that even having floating exchange rates does not guarantee that you can maintain your policy independence.
Events are moving very rapidly; perhaps the EU will find a way to prevent this disaster. But at the moment, things look very grim.
Yesterday Greece elected a new anti-austerity party, Syriza, to lead its next government. New prime minister Alexis Tsipras has pledged to end the austerity measures forced on Greece in the wake of the world financial crisis. Syriza is two votes shy of a majority in the Greek parliament, and announced a coalition last night with a right-wing Euroskeptic party, the Independent Greeks.
Syriza campaigned on a platform of ending the austerity measures and renegotiating its debt with the so-called "troika" of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and the European Union. The German government is strongly opposed to any debt forgiveness, but supporters of Syriza, such as the Jubilee Debt Campaign, are quick to point out that in 1953 it was Germany that received substantial debt forgiveness, with half its debt written off. And let's also not forget that despite Germany's self-image of economic virtue, a large part of its current world-topping trade surplus comes from the fact that the euro is undervalued for Germany.
As Paul Krugman points out, while critics inside and outside Greece routinely refer to Syriza as "hard left," "left-wing," etc., "it’s actually preaching fairly conventional economics, while the
supposedly responsible officials of Brussels and Berlin have been
relying on radical doctrines like expansionary austerity and a growth
cliff at 90 percent." He quotes Francesco Saraceno: "On closer inspection, it seems far more radical the position of those
who, despite having grossly underestimated the negative effects of
austerity, ask for more of the same; of those who insist on advocating
supply-side reforms to cope with a chronic lack of demand..."
This lack of demand is reflected in Greece's unemployment rate, which has been above 25% since July 2012. It has retreated to 25.8% from a high of 28% in 2013, but because its gross domestic product has fallen so much, the country's debt/GDP has continued to increase despite its austerity policies. Indeed, the ratio has increased because of austerity.
It remains to be seen how successful Syriza will be. But it is already serving as an inspiration to other anti-austerity parties, notably Podemos in Spain, which still has an unemployment rate of 23.7%.
Austerity policies remain very much in play in the United States, with us today seeing an announcement of a bipartisan House committee on Social Security "reform" (read: cuts). It is good to finally see some hope that Europe is beginning to reject the politics of austerity.
I keep telling people that the German euro is undervalued, but some folks seem not to believe me. (See the comments section from this post last year for an example.) But this is a really big deal. The dominant narrative about the eurozone crisis is that fiscally irresponsible countries like Greece were bringing the once-proud currency to its knees, and weakening the European project to boot. Meanwhile, the virtuous Germans keep on cranking out trade surpluses and have to bail out Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. And it's pretty clear that the Germans believe this version of events.
Never mind that Spain and Ireland, for two, had budget surpluses prior to the crisis, or that Spain's economy is five times as large as Greece's. What's going on in Greece is supposedly the true explanation for the eurozone's problems.
Let me challenge that narrative that with a simple thought experiment. Instead of one euro, let us reason as if each of the 18 eurozone members had its "own" "euro." Let's begin by thinking about what creates the value of the current 18-country euro. We might include interest rates, inflation rates, growth rates, and trade balance, among other things, and of course expectations for all these variables. What we need to remember is that the value of today's euro represents the averaged effect of all these variables in all 18 countries, rather than reflecting the economic conditions of any one of them.
So the euro is currently worth about $1.25. It used to be higher; what is dragging it down? The simple answer is that conditions in Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and at time Italy have pulled its value down. As has often been noted, if Greece pulled out of the euro it would then devalue the drachma, becoming internationally competitive again without the need for the brutal austerity that has pushed its unemployment rate over 25%. The same is true for the other peripheral countries. By looking at what would happen to the drachma/punt/peseta/escudo, we can see that, for these countries, the euro is overvalued. Another way to say it is that the "Greek euro," for example is overvalued.
So why isn't the value of the euro lower than $1.25? The answer, of course, is that Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Luxembourg, and so forth, are performing well and pushing the value of the euro upwards. These countries, by contrast, would see their currency values rise if the euro were suddenly abolished. For Germany, for instance, the euro is undervalued; an equivalent DM would rise in value.
U.S. officials constantly rail about the undervalued Chinese yuan and the huge bilateral trade deficit it creates for this country. But officials could (and to some extent do) say the same thing about Germany, which now has a larger trade surplus than the vastly larger Chinese economy. In fact, last year Morgan Stanley estimated that a stand-alone German euro would be worth $1.53, compared to the actual euro exchange rate then of $1.33.
With an undervalued currency, Germany gets a much larger trade surplus than it would have had otherwise, magnifying trade deficits in the United States and elsewhere. At the same time, it gets to pretend that this surplus is simply due to German thrift and virtue, rather than currency misalignment. It then points to its virtue as justification for doing nothing to increase domestic consumption, wages, or inflation, and for demanding austerity from the countries to which Paul Krugman rightly says Germany is exporting deflation.
Let me leave you with Krugman's chart. You can see at a glance that Germany has throttled nominal wage growth and has inflation far below the European Central Bank's announced target of just under 2%. When you combine its low inflation with an undervalued exchange rate (remember, low inflation should tend to raise the currency's value), you come to realize that Germany is a huge part of the world economy's problems today.
August brings us the annual Irish immigration data, so it's time to look at what has happened in their statistical reporting "year" that ended in April 2014. While better than last year, it's still not pretty.
According to the Central Statistics Office, net emigration continued in 2013-14, with net emigration of 21,400. a decline of just over 1/3 compared to net emigration of 33,100 in 2012-13. Of the new total, once again, the Irish themselves accounted for over 100% of the net departures, with 29,200 more Irish nationals leaving the country than returning.
This continued out-migration continues to diminish any published improvements in Irish employment numbers and unemployment rate. In the year to the second quarter of 2014 (the closest quarter to April 2014 immigration figures), employment increased to 1,901,600, a rise of 31,600 over a year previous. Unemployment fell by even more, 46,200, in the year to Q2 2014. So, while there is definite improvement even accounting for emigration, Ireland is nowhere near back to its peak 2007 employment figure of about 2.15 million. So employment is still 11.6% below its peak.
In Iceland (create a custom table here), by contrast, despite (but also in part because of of) the almost 50% decline in the value of the kronor, the sharp dip in unemployment has been almost completely erased, with July 2014's value of 179,000 employed being a mere 1.7% below May 2008's maximum of 182,100. Indeed, Iceland's unemployment rate has fallen to a mere 4.4% in July 2014, compared with 6.2% in the United States -- and 11.5% in Ireland.
So the lesson, if I have haven't pounded it into your head enough already, is that Ireland's austerity measures are not paying off, as it has failed to regain its pre-crisis employment level and has seen its unemployment rate fall only by reverting to its historical solution of exporting people, as in the 1980s.
You've probably heard of the U.S. Debt Clock. I'm not linking to it because its goal is to strengthen deficit hysteria, one of the techniques used to try to destroy the welfare state.
But have you seen the U.S. Lost Output Clock? This is much more informative, showing us just how high the cost of recession and slow recovery (due to austerity, especially at the state and local level) has been. The total now stands at over $5.2 trillion. (H/t @nielsandeweg and Dean Baker)
Here is the clock as of about 2:00pm EST January 22:
United States Lost Output Clock
$5,202,951,507,765
Lost National Income since the Financial Crisis of 2008.
Blue line = Potential GDP (if capital and labor are fully employed with adequate demand)
Red line = Actual GDP
Source: http://www.lostoutputclock.com/
As noted, this is calculated by summing the distance between actual and potential gross domestic product. It's a scary picture, especially because there doesn't seem to be much recent change in the distance between the two lines.
Something worth looking at every few months as a reality check. It is, as Paul Krugman says, time to End This Depression Now!
Dean Baker and Paul Krugman are just two of the economists who have noted recently that French President François Hollande has lost his mind. As Krugman notes, Hollande has quite literally invoked the discredited doctrine known as Say's Law, when Hollande said “supply actually creates demand.”
In other words, Hollande has fallen victim to austerity fever, despite its lack of success in other Eurozone countries such asIreland. Baker points us to an ABC News report that is more specific about Hollande's plans: Despite 11% unemployment, he wants to cut government spending by about 4% in 2015-2017, a total of 50 billion euros (approximately $68 billion).
Take a look at the following chart: Does this look like an economy that can adopt austerity successfully?
From 0% growth in 2012 Q1 to -0.1% growth in 2013 Q3, five of the last seven quarters have seen zero or negative growth in gross domestic product. It is already a prime candidate for another recession. But Hollande seems determined to go over the austerity cliff.
Are these the policies that Hollande and his Socialist Party campaigned on in 2012? Do I really have to tell you?
The Eurozone experiment in austerity continues to fail as the peripheral countries endure ongoing cuts. Following up on my post of August 15, it's time to look at the most recent Irish immigration data to update it through April 2013 (Ireland records population data from May 1 to April 30) and see how it affects the reported unemployment rate. The picture remains ugly, with emigration climbing once again, from 87,100 in 2011-2012 to 89,000 in 2012-13. Immigration increased by 3200, so net emigration fell by 1300, with net out-migration over the year declining by about 3% to 33,100. Here are the details:
Take a good look at the last line: Net emigration by the Irish themselves increased by 35.9% and accounts for all net out-migration; there was net in-migration by non-Irish citizens of 2100 in 2012-13. Indeed, the Irish comprised 57.2% of all emigrants in the most recent report.
What was the effect of emigration on the unemployment rate? Once again in 2013, people in the age group closest to what we would consider prime-age workers (15-64, given how Ireland reports immigration by age groups; see Table 4 of the linked report) left the country at a higher rate than children and seniors, with total out-migration for those 15-64 of 35,300. That brings total out-migration for population years 2010-2013 to 126,000.
Since April 2013 data is a much better match for Ireland's official first-quarter 2013 unemployment data than April 2012 was, I am going to repeat my calculation from August, still using Q1 2013 unemployment of 13.7% as my base. Again, there were 292,000 officially unemployed in the first quarter; dividing by 0.137 gives an estimated workforce of 2,131,387. We now add 126,000 to numerator and denominator to get the maximum potential unemployment rate, which would exist if all 126,000 were in the labor force and unemployed: 418,000/2,257,387, or 18.5%.
Even if we add in only those in the most prime working-age group in the Irish statistics, those from 25 to 44 years old, we still find that the imputed unemployment rate exceeds the country's maximum during this crisis of 15.1%. 2013's 12,500 net out-migration in this age group brings the 2010-2013 total to 48,500; adding this to the numerator and denominator gives us 340,500/2,179,887 or 15.6%.
Paul Krugman points out that we can also see this by looking at Ireland's employment rate. Over 2.1 million were employed in the third quarter of 2007; in the second quarter of 2013, the number is still far depressed at 1,869,900, which represents a 1.8% increase from a year earlier.
Finally, the overall picture for the EU and the eurozone has deteriorated over the previous year: EU unemployment rose from 10.6% in August 2012 to 10.9% in August 2013 (most recent month available), while eurozone unemployment rose from 11.5% in August 2012 to 12.0% in August 2013. Both figures were down a hair from several months earlier. But in Greece, new records continue to be set, with unemployment in June 2013 (most recent month available) hitting 27.9%. By contrast, as Eurostat shows, unemployment has steadily declined in the United States and Japan.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the evidence that austerity has failed in Europe still is not affecting EU policy, nor has it stopped the cacophony of voices in the United States calling for more austerity. While Republicans supposedly "lost" the government shutdown crisis, they succeeded in locking in sequester-level government spending until the next crisis, and sequester II will be here soon. God help us.
July 31 saw the latest release of European Union unemployment numbers, and Monday's gross domestic product figures brought no joy, especially for Greece. As Think Progress reports, Greek unemployment hit a new record of 27.6 % in May, while Spain's June unemployment figure was 26.3%, according to Eurostat. As the world's biggest experiment in austerity, the European Union continues to prove a failure. Below is the Eurostat figure for unemployment in member states for June, including new (as of July 1) member Croatia, designated HR (click for larger image).
As reported at first at Reuters, Greece's gross domestic product has fallen by 23% since January 2008. Anyway you slice it, that's a depression, not a recession. Despite austerity, the Greek economy has gotten sicker and sicker.
But, wait! you say. What about Ireland? Its unemployment rate has dropped an estimated 1.5 percentage points from its January 2012 peak of 15.1% to just 13.6% in June 2013. Isn't austerity finally paying off there?
If only that were so. What actually is happening is that Ireland has returned to its historical solution of substantial out-migration to reduce the number of unemployed workers that show up in the official data. And yes, the numbers are way more than enough to wipe out the apparent 1.5 point drop.
According to the Central Statistics Office Ireland (Table 5), emigration has surged from 72,000 in 2009, the last year of net in-migration, to 87,100 in 2012, when net out-migration was 34,400. If you look at net emigration of those 15-64, the closest we can get with the data to prime working age, the situation is even somewhat worse. Over 2010-2012, net out-migration in that age group has totaled 90,700.
I calculate the potential effect on the unemployment rate as follows. Ireland only compiles official unemployment data quarterly, and makes monthly estimates in between. So the last official unemployment rate was 13.7% for the first quarter of this year. According to the CSO, there were 292,000 unemployed then. Dividing by 0.137, we get a labor force of 2,131,387, subject to rounding error. Now add 90,700 to both numerator and denominator, and the maximum potential unemployment rate, if all of those people were in the labor force and unemployed, is 382,700/2,222,087 or 17.2%.
Now, certainly some of the 15-24 year olds would not be in the labor force, though many will. Even if we restrict ourselves to the 25-44 age group, net out-migration for 2010-2012 comes to 36,000, which would bring the unemployment rate back to 15.1%, equal to the worst month since the recession began.
We can see, then, that austerity is sinking all boats. Greece has passed Spain in unemployment and is producing barely 3/4 what it did in 2008. Ireland's reduction in unemployment is a mirage based on emigration. The same is true in Latvia and Lithuania, by the way, which the Irish Times reports have lost 7.6% and 10.1% of their population between 2007 and 2012. As the paper notes, "If Spain and Italy had lost the same proportion, it would have been 11 million."
Yet the drumbeat for austerity continues. The sequester goes on. And millions suffer needlessly.
Here is a link for my appearance on Thom Hartmann last night.
One of the things brought up was a new study by the Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America's Future showing that the CEOs behind "Fix the Debt" have benefited from tax breaks for executive compensation to the tune of about $1 billion in 2009-11, for just those companies. This tax break lets companies count pay using stock options -- which doesn't cost the companies anything -- as if it were cash pay and thus deduct it against corporate income. According to Citizens for Tax Justice (via Common Dreams and Huffington Post), the Fortune 500 saved $11.2 billion with this loophole in 2012. Apple alone profited by $3.2 billion from 2010 to 2012 from this tax break.
I will be talking austerity tonight with Thom Hartmann on his show,
"The Big Picture." The program reaches 50 million homes in the United
States, and you can look for a station here. Alternatively, you can watch it online here. The show starts at 7:00pm Eastern Daylight Time, and I am told my segment will begin about 7:15.
The European Union released its unemployment figures
this week. Eurozone unemployment increased from 12.0% in February to
12.1% in March, up from 11.0% in March 2013. Greece reached 27.2%
unemployment in January 2013 (most recent data available), while
according to Eurostat's harmonized unemployment measure, Spain reached
26.7% in March.
As if there were not already abundant proof of the failure of austerity in the eurozone, the BBC reports today that both Spain and France have hit new unemployment milestones.
In Spain, unemployment has jumped from February's 26.3% to a first-quarter rate of 27.2% (implying an even higher figure for March). In March 2012, it was "only" 24.1% (see source in table below).
In France, there are now 3.2 million unemployed, more than at any time since the country began keeping records in 1996. Complete EU unemployment data for March should be released in early May.
For a fuller picture of the continuing deterioration of the situation in the European Union and the eurozone, the unemployment rates tell a stark story.
Date Eurozone Spain Greece Portugal Ireland UK USA EU-27
Note: Greece and UK figures are for January 2012 and December 2012, rather than March 2012 and February 2013
Sources: Eurostat, 2 May 2012, for March 2012; Eurostat, 2 April 2013, for February 2013; Bureau of Labor Statistics for U.S.
Moreover, it is important to note that despite drastic budget-slashing, in none of the EU countries did debt come under control, even for Ireland and the UK, which have managed some slight growth over the 11-month period. Using this handy BBC interactive tool, we can see that Spain's debt/GDP ratio increased from 69.3% in 2011 to 84.2% in 2012 (Wait, that's under 90%! What's happening?), Greece declined from 170.3% to 156.9%, Portugal increased from 108.3% to 123.6%, Ireland increased from 106.4% to 117.6%, and the U.K. increased from 85.5% to 90%. In fact, just six short years earlier, Ireland had a debt/GDP ratio of just 24.6%. The Celtic Tiger, favorite of conservatives everywhere, has truly crashed and burned.
Given the Spanish and French figures, look for bad news for EU unemployment next week. Despite the continuing austerity fail, Republicans and some Democrats continue to push for deficit cutting here, and will maintain a steady drumbeat. But, like Reinhart and Rogoff, they all deserve the Colbert treatment.
While we are busy paying attention to the 550th edition of Republican-caused fake crises (aka the sequester), a much more real crisis is brewing in the Eurozone. Richard Field at Trust Your Instincts flags a Reuters report that that Eurozone regulators are strongly considering a proposal to make not just investors in Cyprus banks pay for part of their bailout, but bank depositors as well.
Cyprus is a tax haven, and deposits in the banks there come to some 70 billion euros, more than 3 1/2 times the tiny country's 18 billion euro gross domestic product. One proposal under consideration would be to hold all deposits over 100,000 euros in escrow -- for up to 30 years! Another proposal, says Reuters, would "impose a retroactive tax on all deposits over 100,000 euros..." If either of these options looks like it is close to being approved, it is likely to cause a run on banks in Cyprus. As Field argues, if one of these plans is established, depositors will likely wonder if it could be applied to other debtor countries like Spain or Italy, causing even more turmoil. (Note: 100,000 euros is the maximum that can be covered by deposit insurance programs similar to the FDIC in the U.S.)
While European leaders seem to want to blunder into a new way of creating a euro crisis, the evidence continues that their preferred austerity policies are failing. The European Commission has announced that the eurozone will remain in recession throughout 2013, according to a separate report by Reuters. Previously, the Commission had predicted that the recession would end this year. As Paul Krugman shows, the countries that have had the severest austerity have had the largest contractions in their economy. Based on International Monetary Fund estimates of the policy change in a number of European countries, he plots this against the change in their real gross domestic product from 2008 to 2012:
So, for example, Greece has imposed austerity equal to about 15% of potential GDP, and seen its actual GDP shrink by about 18%.
Despite the clear failure of austerity policies in the eurozone and Great Britain (where 9 months of recession were followed by one quarter of growth but a renewed slump in the last quarter of 2012, and Moody's just downgraded the country's debt), Republicans are still trying to impose budget cuts on the country that we voted against in November. As I discussed then, the sequester's discretionary budget cuts will be unambiguously bad for the middle class. Now, Republicans are trying to convert the defense cuts of the sequester into further slashing into middle class programs, while President Obama has offered to convert Social Security's inflation adjustment to so-called "chained CPI," which will slowly but relentlessly cut into benefits year after year through the magic of compounding. According to Dean Baker at the link above, the reduction would be about 0.3% per year, so benefits will be 3% lower after 10 years, 6% after 20 years, etc.
Considering how bad middle class retirement prospects are already looking, the President's offer would be disastrous for millions if implemented. The right course of action is simple: cancel the sequester, forget about cutting Social Security (which is not part of the so-called debt problem anyway), and focus on jobs and growth. As Paul Krugman says, "End this Depression Now!"
