Paul Krugman in Simon Wren-Lewis sta se razpisala o neumnosti politikov, ki so sposobni eno četrtletje rasti po dveh ali treh letih recesije razglasiti kot uspeh politike varčevanja. Saj ne morejo biti tako neumni, mar ne? Ja, pa so. Hkrati pa je to njihova zelo pametna strategija.

Simon Wren-Lewis:

As I have pointed out before in the context of discussing the Latvian experience, we could close down half the economy for a year. The next year economic growth would be fantastic. Only a fool would argue that this showed that closing down half the economy for a year was a great idea.

In vendar politikom uspeva natanko to. Idealno je, če se jim po mizerni prvi polovici mandata nato nenadoma zgodi rast v drugi polovici. Paul Krugman:

So the claims of success coming from both the European Commission and now from Cameron/Osborne are deeply stupid — but that doesn’t mean that they won’t gain traction. And as a political matter, bouncing dead cats can work very well. Combine Wren-Lewis’s thought experiment about shutting down the economy with the substantial political science evidence that elections depend not on the level of income but on its rate of growth in the runup to the election, and you conclude that from a sheer political point of view gratuitously depressing the economy for the first half of your term in office can be a very smart move.