The conservative reconstruction of history
I am increasingly reading analysis from the mainstream economists that attempts to reconstruct the current crisis as a fiscal crisis. The claim is that the crisis is about lax fiscal policy and that the solution to the on-going sluggish (if not continued negative) growth is to quickly withdraw all fiscal stimulus. The conservatives are thus in total denial as to the real causes of the crisis and the role that fiscal policy interventions have played in attenuating the damage invoked by the crisis. For a time they were silent because it was clear that the neo-liberal macroeconomics paradigm that is forced down the throats of students around the world was incapable of providing any coherent explanation for the crisis. But they are now re-appearing, larger than life itself, and have resumed their arrogant hectoring of the policy makers and the electorate. They are once again trying to impose the same policies on governments that led to the crisis in the first place. They are doing this by reconstructing history and relying on our lack of memory recall and incomplete comprehension of things economic.