NEWS FLASH

CHART: How Austerity Is Squashing Europe’s Economic Growth | With Mitt Romney’s admission yesterday that — as progressives have been arguing — budget cuts depress economic growth, it’s worth looking at the effect austerity measures are having in Europe. As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman charts out, the economic picture of austerity in action is not pretty:

“The results are in — and they’re exactly what three generations’ worth of economic analysis and all the lessons of history should have told you would happen,” Krugman wrote. “None of the countries slashing spending have seen the predicted private-sector surge. Instead, the depressing effects of fiscal austerity have been reinforced by falling private spending.”