19-2-2013
Here is a quote from a recent
pro-austerity article in an Establishment Greek newspaper: “Let us not
forget that [Greece’s] primary surplus in 2009 was 10% and the result
was a recession of 2.8%. Thus the fiscal multiplier was -3.5, not 0.5,
not 0.75, not 1.7!” The author’s purpose, of course, was to argue that
the IMF’s mea culpa regarding the mis-calculation of fiscal
multipliers was, in fact, grossly exaggerated; that if there was an
error it was one of over-estimating Greece’s multiplier rather than
underestimating it. Indeed, through his illiterate eyes, Greece’s
multiplier appears to the article’s author… negative, a negative 3.5,
and thus he comes to the remarkable conclusion that the nation’s
problems would be, as the author in fact argues, “to hand over the keys”
to Greece’s creditors.
It is now becoming obvious that
economic illiteracy has forged an unbreakable alliance with economic
misanthropy and self-hatred by certain members of the Greek
Establishment’s Commentariat. But let me, for now, stick to the
‘economic illiteracy’ part of this unholy alliance.
