Austerity's Prophets – Mark Skousen

Austerity's Prophets – Mark Skousen

“Austerity” has become the watchword of the year. Governors, prime ministers, and presidents around the world are talking about cutting welfare benefits, curtailing public union power, and reducing deficits. We’ve over-promised at the public trough, and now we must pay the price. Whoever is elected president in November is going to face the need to retrench.
Yet only one school of economic thought, that of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, predicted and prescribed austerity before the Great Recession. More prominent branches of free-market economics, no less than spendthrift progressives, have been slow to realize that neither fiscal nor monetary stimulus can cure what ails the West. As the psalmist says, “The rejected stone has become the chief cornerstone.”