Doctors Remove Bullet from Victim's Head: Seek to Determine Cause of Death

A New York Times article on "Europe's lost decade" could have easily had a headline like this. The piece talks about the high unemployment and weak growth across the euro zone, but never notes the obvious cause, major cutbacks in government spending and tax increases. The predicted result of such austerity measures is a contraction in demand.

This is even more likely to be the outcome of austerity in the euro zone than in the United States, since the private sector is a smaller share of the e...