When two highly-regarded economists skew information to reinforce bad policy, good people get hurt.
So what did Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt do to prolong the harm Republican policies were doing to many average Americans? They applauded Republicans' focus on the effect debt has on economic growth. Even though the stats don't show that slow growth is linked to debt.
[They] claimed that they never asserted that debt necessarily causes slow growth. That’s a bit disingenuous because they repeatedly insinuated that proposition even if they avoided saying it outright. ...Paul Krugman,NYT
Result: "Austerity" was used as a bludgeon to harm, rather than assist, people who had been severely hurt by criminal behaviors on the part of their banks.
So the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco needs to be seen in the broader context of austerity mania: the obviously intense desire of policy makers, politicians and pundits across the Western world to turn their backs on the unemployed and instead use the economic crisis as an excuse to slash social programs.
What the Reinhart-Rogoff affair shows is the extent to which austerity has been sold on false pretenses. For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity. Economic research, austerity advocates insisted, showed that terrible things happen once debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P. But “economic research” showed no such thing; a couple of economists made that assertion, while many others disagreed. Policy makers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they wanted to, not because they had to. ...Paul Krugman,NYT
The monster, unfortunately, isn't back behind bars thanks to the revelation that two distinguished economists were, at the best best, "careless." Reinhardt and Rogoff are in trouble. But the Republican party won't give up trying to destroy the nation's safety net. Politicians won't stop protecting banks and other corporations who contribute generously to campaign funds. Not, that is, until we throw out those members of Congress and quit patronizing those funders.
