Social Europe
The last time we heard the drumbeat of austerity was during the global financial crisis. In the US, the prescribed response took the form of a milquetoast “sequester” (spending caps). But in Europe, the fiscal tightening went much further, destroying a decade’s worth of growth, undermining public investment, and contributing to many of the problems that the continent is still struggling with today. What was obviously a failure of private finance was rechristened a crisis of runaway state spending.