GREAT ?: How Much Unemployment Was Caused by Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake?

[kpete]

How Much Unemployment Was Caused by Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake?

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This is a big deal because politicians around the world have used this finding from R&R to justify austerity measures that have slowed growth and raised unemployment. In the United States many politicians have pointed to R&R's work as justification for deficit reduction even though the economy is far below full employment by any reasonable measure. In Europe, R&R's work and its derivatives have been used to justify austerity policies that have pushed the unemployment rate over 10 percent for the euro zone as a whole and above 20 percent in Greece and Spain. In other words, this is a mistake that has had enormous consequences.

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more:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-much-unemployment-was-caused-by-reinhart-and-rogoffs-arithmetic-mistake
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-university-of-massachusetts-econ-department-how-we-know-reinhart-and-rogoff-were-wrong
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/26/1204991/-Dean-Baker-How-much-unemployment-was-caused-by-Reinhart-Rogoff

[Progressive dog]

1. None, the austerians don't need any evidence

If they did they would have looked at the actual economic record in the first place. This is a manufactured justification and will be defended by the austerians forever. Think of it as the resurrection of Reaganomics with the same goal-consolidate wealth and power in a hereditary plutocracy.

[librechik]

2. enormous consequences for the 99%

so why should the 1% do anything to fix it?

[HereSince1628]

3. People have died. IIRC there were several who set themselves on fire

as well as people who died in rioting...no count on the number who were driven to quiet uncounted suicides

[Merlot]

4. It was a "mistake" (don't forget the quotation marks)

The writers of this paper had a premise and worked backwards to make the results match their premise. Why else would they leave out 3 countries that would have also changed the results?

Calling this a mistake is as big a lie as the conclusions of this paper are.