Navigate: Latest News • Background • Economics of Austerity • International Austerity

"Austerity" is a policy of reducing budgets deficits through increased taxes and lower spending. Economists widely agree that such policies will worsen the economy and increase unemployment when the economy is recovering from a recession, as it is today. Austerity measures have already contributed to skyrocketing unemployment in Europe. The U.S. has also been pursuing austerity measures over the past several years.

This page is devoted to covering the latest developments in the politics and economics of austerity.

Latest News

• Center for American Progress: Why Austerity Fails When the Cuts Get Specific (9/10/13)
• Economic Policy Institute: Budget Debates Matter: The Difference in GOP and Democratic Levels of Discretionary Spending for 2014 Translates into Nearly 1 Million Jobs (9/4/13)
• New York Times: Philadelphia Borrows So Its Schools Open on Time (8/15/13)
• NBC News: Pandemic of pension woes is plaguing the nation (8/5/13)
• Daily Kos: Austerity in Chicago's public schools: A Greek tragedy of epic proportions (7/28/13)
• Mother Jones: The Cost of Austerity: 3 Million Jobs (7/26/13)
• Huffington Post: The Complete Failure Of Austerity, In 1 Chart (7/23/13)
• ThinkProgress: Austerity is Leaving Children Sick with Lead Poisoning (7/16/13)
• New York Times: Joblessness to Keep Rising, O.E.C.D. Forecasts (7/16/13)
• Reuters: Pentagon chief says draconian steps would be needed to meet cuts (7/10/13)
• Reuters: House Republicans detail proposed domestic spending cuts (7/9/13)
• Washington Post: Bad bridges have hidden cost (6/18/13)
• Wonk Blog: IMF to Congress: No, seriously, guys, stop it (6/14/12)
• BBC: IMF: US budget buts 'ill-designed' (6/14/13)
• Huffington Post: Austerity Is Dead -- So Can We Fix the Infrastructure NOW? (6/12/13)
• Foreign Policy: Calling Out the Austerians: Why starving the beast will kill the U.S. economy (6/11/13)
• Huffington Post: Grand Bargain Loses Center For American Progress Support In Major Blow To Austerity (6/6/13)
• Center for American Progress: It’s Time to Hit the Reset Button on the Fiscal Debate (6/6/13)
• Wonk Blog: Now is the time to be an infrastructure hawk, not a deficit hawk (6/5/13)
• Wonk Blog: Stop celebrating our falling deficits (5/22/13)
• Wonk Blog: Bernanke to Congress: Seriously, guys, what are you doing? (5/22/13)
• New York Times: About That Debt Crisis? Never Mind (5/15/13)
• New York Times: Economists See Deficit Emphasis as Impeding Recovery (5/8/2013)
• The Nation: Austerity Is 'Suffocating the Economy' (5/3/13)
• Economic Policy Institute: Winning the intellectual debate on austerity while losing the policy debate (5/2/13)
• New York Magazine: How the Mainstream Media Broke Up With Austerity (4/29/13)

Background

• Salon: The day the right lost the economic argument (7/25/13)
• Senate Budget Committee: The Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity (6/4/13)
• The Economist: The Austerity Debate: Now and Later (5/15/13)
• The New York Times: How National Belt-Tightening Goes Awry (5/19/12)

Economics of Austerity

• Institute for New Economic Thinking: When Is the Time for Austerity? (7/27/13)
• Economic Policy Institute: Why the Bipartisan Commitment to Public Investment Should Go Beyond Mere Rhetoric (6/13/13)
• Center for American Progress: Fiscal Austerity Is Undermining Long-Term U.S. Economic Prospects (6/6/13)
• Bloomberg: Krugman Feud With Reinhart-Rogoff Escalates as Austerity Debated (5/28/13)
• Testimony: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke Before the Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, Washington D.C. (5/22/13)
• Foreign Affairs: The Austerity Delusion (5/6/13)
• Mother Jones: Quote of the Day: Fed Says That Austerity is Stupid (5/1/13)
• The New Yorker: The Reinhart and Rogoff Controversy: A Summing Up (4/29/13)
• New York Times: The Story of Our Time (4/28/13)
• BBC News: Reinhart, Rogoff... and Herndon: The student who caught out the profs (4/19/13)
• The Atlantic: Forget Excel: This Was Reinhart and Rogoff's Biggest Mistake (4/18/13)
• Financial Post: How a student took on two Harvard economists over their pro-austerity study — and won (4/18/13)
• Daily Kos: Keynesian Economics for Dummies (10/21/13)

International Austerity

• New York Times: A Tale of Two Flat Countries (8/13/13)
• ThinkProgress: Italy’s Recession Is Now Its Longest Since World War II (8/7/13)
• ThinkProgress: Eurozone Debt Hits All-Time High Amid Continuing Austerity (7/22/13)
• Der Spiegel:  Debt Paralysis: Can Austerity Alone Save Portugal? (7/17/13)
• The New York Review of Books: How Austerity Has Failed (7/11/13)
• BBC: Greece's life-saving austerity medics (7/10/13)
• Der Spiegel:  'A Toxic System': Why Austerity Still Isn't Working in Greece (7/9/13)
• Los Angeles TImes: Europe rethinks its pursuit of austerity (6/14/12)
• Project Syndicate: Lessons of a Greek Tragedy (6/13/13)
• AP: Greek State TV, Radio Broadcasts Go Off the Air (6/11/13)
• Bloomberg: Austerity Has Diminished Britain- and Cameron, Too (6/13/13)
• Think Progress: IMF Admits Major Errors in Greek Austerity Push (6/6/13)
• Wonk Blog: Yes, Europe really is in the throes of austerity (6/5/13)
• Der Spiegel: Austerity About-Face: German Government to Gamble on Stimulus (5/27/13)
• New York Times: As Japan Courts Growth, Europe Keeps Up Its Love Affair With Austerity (5/16/13)
• Reuters: Thousands rally against European austerity on May Day (5/1/13)
• The Guardian: Austerity has never worked (6/4/12)