The Patient is Bleeding to Death - Quick, Apply Leeches!

But even that is not as ass-backwards as slashing spending in a recession.

Heather:

Gergen uses what's going on in Ireland right now as as excuse to tell Americans that we had better get ready for some "tough medicine" once the deficit commission comes out with their report next week and of course that "medicine" should start with going after Social Security. Heaven forbid the rich should have to pay back the government for those tax cuts. Gergen apparently thinks the peons should be paying for their excesses.

Hilarious, because Ireland is proof positive that austerity kills.

Krugman, who has been warning about this for at least two years:

These debts were incurred, not to pay for public programs, but by private wheeler-dealers seeking nothing but their own profit. Yet ordinary Irish citizens are now bearing the burden of those debts.

Or to be more accurate, they’re bearing a burden much larger than the debt — because those spending cuts have caused a severe recession so that in addition to taking on the banks’ debts, the Irish are suffering from plunging incomes and high unemployment.

But there is no alternative, say the serious people: all of this is necessary to restore confidence.

Strange to say, however, confidence is not improving. On the contrary: investors have noticed that all those austerity measures are depressing the Irish economy — and are fleeing Irish debt because of that economic weakness.

SNIP

Ireland is now in its third year of austerity, and confidence just keeps draining away. And you have to wonder what it will take for serious people to realize that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.

So the next time you hear anyone so much as hint that an appropriate response to our current recession is a spending cut of any kind, shape or form, ask her this: "You mean like Ireland?"

If she says yes, you'll know she's a shill for the bankers and is wrong about everything.