Austerity After Reinhart and Rogoff

The Financial Times provides a platform for economists to explain why the study by R&R should not have been used to make public policy.  The fiction of the 90% threshold, beyond which the debt to GDP ratio can surpass without harming economic growth has been destroyed, but the damage will be hard to correct.  Unlike the US, the UK or Japan, some countries are unable to borrow at affordable interest rates,  and the forces in the US and the UK that are pushing austerity are doing so for political reasons.  They want to lower the progressiveness of the tax system and to reduce government spending on programs that do not benefit the super-rich.  The pundits that used R&R to create public opinion in favor of austerity will find other economists to defend tax cuts for corporations and the super-rich along with cuts to government social welfare programs.  David Brooks, George Will and Robert Samuelson have no trouble finding the necessary help.