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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Bill Clinton Says It: Paul Krugman is Right on Austerity

     He qualified it for the short run. Still just mentioning the name while at a Pete Peterson summit is clearly a hint at the waning momentum of austerity.

     "Former President Bill Clinton began his appearance at Pete Peterson's annual fiscal summit Tuesday by approvingly invoking the name of the movement's arch ideological enemy."

    "Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, has been the leading opponent of deficit hysteria and austerity, while Peterson has spent some $500 million since 2007 encouraging deficit reduction."
    "Clinton, interviewed on a keynote panel by MSNBC's Tamron Hall, began by saying he wanted to address "one factual dispute."
    "I think everybody in this debate has an obligation to say what they believe," said Clinton. "I think Paul Krugman's right in the short run, and Pete Peterson and Simpson-Bowles and all those guys, everybody's right in the long run. And the question is timing."
     "By raising the specter of Krugman, the bane of the deficit-hawk movement, Clinton is sending another signal that the politics of austerity are waning. "It's obvious that if you overdo austerity, you get Europe," he said, noting 12 percent unemployment on the continent.

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/bill-clinton-paul-krugman_n_3229787.html?ref=topbar

    Everyone now believes we should do no austerity in the short term-except maybe R-R before their Excel Mistake came out. 

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/r-r-vs-r-r-on-austerity.html

     For Pete Peterson's part, he doesn't even want to use the austerity label-and he's also only for it in the long run. 

     "In another sign that austerity politics seem to be falling out of fashion, Peterson and his son attempted to walk away from the label. "The austerity movement thing gets conflated into anything that involves dealing with the budget. But that is just false if you are talking about some reform that doesn’t kick in for 10 years but has no impact immediately," Michael Peterson told Politico's Morning Money in advance of the summit.

     "Speaking before Clinton, Pete Peterson noted that "recently I've been called a deficit scold. Well, that may be half right." Peterson allowed that he is, instead, "a long-term debt scold," a problem he warned is a "primary, indeed a transcendent threat to our country's future."

      This is a good sign that austerity is definitely on the defensive now. In 2011 deficit scolds weren't so nervous about the word austerity and they weren't talking long term. Now if Pete Peterson will just learn that health care costs are down and maybe we don't even need long-term deficit scolds anymore...

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/fiscal-game-changer-dont-look-now-but.html

     P.S. Ok, maybe Sumner also agrees with short term austerity as long as the Fed is doing QE.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/sumners-nuanced-support-of-austerity.html

     

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