Bill Mitchell — Greece – now the conservatives are denying there was austerity

The Project Syndicate recently (August 6, 2015) published an Op Ed by conservative Edmund Phelps – What Greece Needs to Prosper. The article was widely syndicated by the conservative media and represents part of the conservative narrative to conveniently revise history when the facts violate the conservative ideological agenda. It is an appalling article. We are now in a phase of “Austerity denial”, where conservatives attempt to massage history to avoid the unpalatable conclusion that the massive austerity that has been imposed on certain countries by the IMF and its partners in crime (in Greece’s case the European Commission and the ECB) has caused huge declines in GDP (levels and growth rates) and deliberately led to millions of people becoming jobless with associated rises in poverty rates. That causality is undeniable.

This is the great thing about the "science" of economics. Those who practice it can get it to say anything they want by either fiddling with the assumptions or torturing the data. It's not science, but pseudoscience — storytelling.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Greece – now the conservatives are denying there was austerity
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia