Ireland's Feeble Recovery: Luckily, Scott Sumner is Heroic

     Krugman calls out the Ireland spin that is was some great recovery generated by stimulative austerity. 

    " Since I’m in Ireland, I should give a belated plug to the very good piece by Fintan O’Toole debunking talk about Irish recovery."

     "It’s kind of amazing, really. Here’s what Ireland’s recovery — both what has happened so far, and what’s likely over the next two years — looks like, according to the European Commission itself:

European Commission

    "It takes an almost heroic act of denial to look at this chart and see a success story, a vindication for austerity policies."

     "And for what it’s worth (which isn’t much), Dublin still looks like a depressed city, with a lot of vacant storefronts — although my impressions may be colored by what I know about the macro numbers. Also, hotel rooms are remarkably cheap — good for visitors, but a sign that business remains very slack."

     "It’s really quite awesome, then, how the slight uptick here and in a few other places is being greeted by the likes of Olli Rehn with victory dances."

     http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/13/success-european-style/?_r=0

     I'm sure though that Sumner is such a heroic soul-he's the same one telling us that the U.S recovery is a victory for MM and austerity. He also claims that you're better off with fiscal austeirty than stimulus giving the choice. 

    "Tyler Cowen recently linked to an article comparing the recoveries (or not) in Latvia and Greece.

    "I think the debate over “austerity” is the wrong debate. "

      http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=18616&cpage=1#comment-312972

     Of course you do, or rather you want to make the case for austerity and your shrewd enough to get that you won't make the case simply by saying "Let's do some deeply painful structural adjustment to please the bond vigilantes' though that's what you want to say. So instead you say this"

     "The demand-siders are right that many countries need more demand.  But if the central bank won’t allow more demand, then the best option might be to boost AS by making your economy as lean and mean as possible.  That might involve shrinking the government."

       With the emphasis on the word mean. And yet MMers deny to me that Sumner supports austerity. 

       "Poland reacted to the global demand shock by devaluing.  It did far better than Latvia, which stayed fixed to the euro.  And Latvia bit the bullet with austerity before Greece, and it’s doing far better than Greece.  These sorts of comparisons are full of lots of complications, ceteris is never paribus.  So maybe it doesn’t show much.  Let me just say that, given their policies, the relative performance of these three countries doesn’t surprise me."

        Can we just admit once and for all that he's an Austerian? His justification and approach is a little novel but as always conservatism is simply old wine new bottles.