The commitment to austerity in 2010 drove critical economists to impatient fury. Why was the world embarked on a course that was so self-evidently counterproductive and so damaging to the prospects of tens of millions of unemployed around the world? Whose interests were being served by preserving this reserve army? Paul Krugman asked in the New York Times.1 Whose interests were served by a lopsided deficit debate in which minor tax increases were traded for huge cuts in entitlements?
