Why Do the Media Provide Cover for Austerity Cranks, Like the Folks Running the EU?

(This post first appeared on my Patreon page.)

It’s not uncommon to read new stories that quite explicitly identify economic mismanagement. For example, news reports on the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe routinely (and correctly) attribute the cause to the poor economic management by its leaders. We will see similar attributions of mismanagement to a wide range of developing countries.

One place we will never see the term mismanagement, or any equivalent term, applied is in reference to the auste...