Austerity and the weak recovery

From Papadimitriou, Nikiforos, and Zezza's new Levy Strategic Analysis:

"over the last 25 years policymakers in Washington have become increasingly fiscally conservative. The current recovery is the only one in the postwar period during which government expenditure has decreased in real terms. Fiscal austerity, together with weak foreign demand, has put the entire burden of supporting aggregate demand on the private sector spending in excess of its income and borrowing. This has led to a rapid increase in the private sector debt-to income ratio in the United States."

Read full report here.

What will happen in Greece?

That's the question everybody is asking. And no, I don't have the answer. But we do know that Tsipras promised to renegotiate the debt, and that Yanis Varoufakis, who has been suggested as the probable finance minister has said that the current policies are a: "kind of fiscal waterboarding policies that have turned Greece into a debt colony." You may want to read Yanis Modest Proposal, co-authored by Jamie Galbraith and Stuart Holland and linked here too. Also, this paper by Dimitri Papadimitriou, Michalis Nikiforos and Gennaro Zezza might be of interest to understand the possibilities and constraints Greece is currently facing.