Austerity fails as predicted (by some): Britain back in recession

One could also argue that the stimulus is like a bridge which droops over a deep crevasse that helps to get back to the same level on the other side much faster.

To believe your argument, we must believe that there is some required level of great suffering before recovery can take place. I've not seen evidence of that.

In fact the evidence of the GD in which nothing was done for 3 years and then austerity implemented to balance the budget caused a double dip, indicates it is counter productive.

You'll agree a stimulus will only work properly if after you cross the gap, during a growth cycle you must take a hit on growth by taxing more heavily to pay for the stimulus. The problem is that politicians never have the restraint to be austere during a boom cycle. They stimulate during a bust cycle, then stimulate some more, digging a deeper and deeper hole that the economy will eventually tumble into.

Some people call ZIRP and inflation and debt "growth," while others call it destruction of the currency and stable markets and destroying the lives of savers and those on fixed incomes.

With all this awesome "growth," how big is the debt again? Five trillion added to it in a mere three years? Good job. I'm sure there's no downsides to that or anything, and that it was the Tea Party that caused the U.S. credit downgrade, not any of the policies that led up to fighting about raising the debt ceiling again.

What's the "best" budget plan passed so far's timeline for balancing the budget? 30 years. Again, awesome. And that's just to balance the deficit. It would still add trillions more to the debt for 30 years.

Deficit spenders: helping themselves today by stealing from their children's tomorrows.

The Difference Between Progressive Liberal Economics & Neo-Con Economics
Richard Penney February 25, 2011

Some people want to know what the difference between liberal economics and neo-conservative economics. Here is a quick lesson that will take less than 1 minute.
Progressive Liberal Economics

Wife: “Honey, we are out of money!”

Liberal Husband: “It’s ok dear, just spend more money. The government will pick some off the magic money tree & send us more.”
Neo-Con Economics

Wife: “Honey, we are all out of money!”

Neo-Con Husband: “It’s ok, dear. Just go ahead and spend more money. The government will bomb someone sometime soon. We need to spread democracy across the globe, after all. And war is good for the economy, so we’ll be just fine.”

Bill Clinton's better budgets only spent, what, like 18.5% of GDP. Paul Ryan's plan spends more than that. Romney wants to spend more than that.

How much "growth" does there need to be before we can go back to Bill Clinton's 18.5% of GDP budgets?

Iceland was a poster child for the kind of crazy speculative real-estate-fueled boom-and-bust that characterized the 2008 crash around the developed world. Now Reuters is reporting that Iceland is on the mend. How did it do it? Part of it was due to the blessing of being a relatively small economy not directly tethered to the euro, which allowed the government to depreciate its currency, regain competitiveness for its exports, and make itself an attractive tourist destination once again.
But profligate Greeks chomping at the bit to leave the eurozone shouldn’t get too excited. It turns out that currency depreciation is not the whole story:...

Bill Clinton's better budgets only spent, what, like 18.5% of GDP. Paul Ryan's plan spends more than that. Romney wants to spend more than that.

How much "growth" does there need to be before we can go back to Bill Clinton's 18.5% of GDP budgets?

Paul Krugman explains why your thinking is wrong: link [nytimes.com]

Except Paul Krugman is a moron.

Except Paul Krugman is a partisan moron.

The Nobel prize-winning economist’s article is highly misleading in its claim that austerity is the cause of Europe’s economic woes today, an assertion that is not backed up by any evidence.
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So we’re now living in a world of zombie economic policies — policies that should have been killed by the evidence that all of their premises are wrong, but which keep shambling along nonetheless.

There is of course a major problem with Krugman’s analysis – deep-seated austerity measures have barely been implemented across most of Europe, including in Britain.

There is a growing consensus across much of Europe that Keynesian-style stimulus measures don’t work. As Portugal’s finance minister Vitor Gaspar told The New York Times last week, his country tried “a Keynesian-style expansion” back in 2008, which was a failure and may have worsened the economic situation:
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It’s no coincidence that the European economy least affected by the financial downturn is the one with the greatest level of economic freedom – Switzerland, which remains outside of both the Eurozone and the European Union. And Europe’s largest economy, Germany, has disavowed Keynesian solutions under Angela Merkel, and is in a far stronger position than other Eurozone members such as France, Spain, Italy, and of course Greece, which have been bastions of government intervention.