{"id":375742,"date":"2010-03-01T12:19:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T17:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/james-pethokoukis\/?p=3407"},"modified":"2010-03-01T12:19:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T17:19:43","slug":"austerity-makes-for-bad-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/375742","title":{"rendered":"Austerity makes for bad politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like the Conservatives in Britain <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.reuters.com\/article\/idUKTRE61R29920100228?pageNumber=3&amp;virtualBrandChannel=0&amp;sp=true\">are getting worried<\/a> that their emphasis on deficit reduction is hurting the party with voters. Labour seems to be catching up in the polls:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The prospect of a hung parliament frightens financial markets, which fear a minority or coalition government would shy away from tough action on the deficit, which is set to exceed 12 percent of GDP this year, a level similar to that of crisis-hit Greece.<\/p>\n<p>Labour plans to halve the deficit in four years with cuts starting next year but says turning off economic stimulus taps now could derail a tentative recovery from a deep recession. The Conservatives say this is too little, too late. They pledge to make an &#8220;early start&#8221; on deficit cutting if they win power, saying delay could cause a crisis of investor confidence and push up interest rates, but they have not given any figures.<\/p>\n<p>The Conservatives&#8217; uncompromising message on the need for belt-tightening may have turned off some voters, who fear public spending cuts could lead to job losses and poorer services. &#8220;The &#8216;age of austerity&#8217; is a sound bite too far,&#8221; said Tim Bale, senior lecturer in politics at Sussex University and author of a recent book on the Conservatives.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Me: A Cameron loss would surely be noted in Washington as another lesson that root-canal economics doesn&#8217;t sell. Rather than a Deficit Commission, someone should suggest a Growth Commission to recommend ways to boost long-term economic growth in a fiscally responsible way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like the Conservatives in Britain are getting worried that their emphasis on deficit reduction is hurting the party with voters. Labour seems to be catching up in the polls: The prospect of a hung parliament frightens financial markets, which fear a minority or coalition government would shy away from tough action on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1063,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1063"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}