Austerians have had their worst week since the last time GDP numbers came out for a country that’s tried austerity.  But this time is, well, different. It’s not “just” that southern Europe is stuck in a depression and Britain is stuck in a no-growth trap. It’s that the very intellectual foundations of austerity are unraveling. In other words, economists are finding out that austerity doesn’t work in practice or in theory.  Article  Further comments on correlation and causality.