Mark Blyth on What's So Dangerous About Austerity?

 

From Truthout

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, a book written by Brown University Professor of International Political Economy Mark Blyth and published last year by Oxford University Press, is one of the most important works to have emerged in recent years on the religion of austerity, the new dogma in neoliberal economics that is so perniciously enforced today in the peripheral countries of the Eurozone (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) and loved by Republicans and all sorts of right-wingers in the United States. In his book, Blyth exposes how dangerous the policy of austerity has been in the past and explains why it resurfaced in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. With his critical analysis of austerity, Professor Blythe also provides a damning critique of orthodox economics and shows that class politics is very much alive in the actions of today's governments and the rich.

Read rest here