Austerity agonistes: why left-wing economists' warnings against austerity programs are wrong.

• Author: de Rugy, Veronique
• Position: Columns - Column

ACROSS EUROPE, governments are announcing new austerity packages of spending cuts and higher taxes rather than Obama-style stimulus spending. In response, American economists such as Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong are warning that these policies will throw Europe back into a depression and should be avoided at all costs in the United States.

"The next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity," Krugman wrote in The New York Times in July, "try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good."

One crucial point Krugman leaves out is that most European Union member states have no alternative. Countries that rely heavily on foreign investors--such as Greece, France, Ireland, Italy, and Spain--must cut spending to avoid being shut off from the global capital markets.

Contrary to common belief, investors don't judge sovereign default risks based on public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. Instead, bond professionals grade on a curve, assessing one country's fiscal behavior against another's. When investors lose confidence in a government's fiscal rectitude relative to its competitors, they withdraw, and the snubbed country suffers. Capital being a scarce good, the result is increased interest rates and a higher price for debt.

One of the key signaling devices for international investors is how a government behaves under financial duress--how it balances the demands of its debtors with those of its welfare recipients. Announcements of lower spending and higher taxes tell investors a country is willing to go to great lengths not to default on its debt obligations. If the government instead focuses on preserving its welfare state and public employee benefits, investors know default is more likely and will shy away from that country's bonds.

Japan has the world's biggest debt as a percentage of GDP, at 227 percent, nearly four times the economist-recommended 60 percent ceiling. It has gotten away with its carelessness without risking default because the country relies more heavily than most on domestic investors to fund its follies. The United States, despite a dangerous debt burden relative to GDP (66 percent) and a structural deficit among the highest of developed countries (almost 4...