Will England’s Austerity Work?

“England, Keynes’s homeland, has rejected the Keynesian solution to depression or recession, which is to stimulate consumption by deficit spending aimed at increasing the incomes and confidence of the public; the Obama Administration has embraced the Keynesian approach (which Americans call ‘stimulus’), though its implementation has been erratic, in part because of deficiencies of timing, design, and execution, and in part because of political resistance. But the two nations’ diametrically opposed approaches have this in common: both proceed, in part, from a desire to use an economic crisis as an occasion for long-term economic reform.”