Since 2008, when the economic ills were being treated with generous does of liquidity, the core crisis of debt management was postponed for some time. Now those ghosts of the pasts have come back to haunt those economies.
Visit to any of the European countries, you will realise, how clean the roads are, how well built the infr
astructure is, how well maintained the entire country is. The question that I used to ask everytime is, where do they get such money from? how do they fund these projects? why there are so less people and so many facilities? Tell an European to work overtime (after work hours) & you will find a person scowling. Ask him to pay for his medi-aid and he will scream cruelty.
What they did not realise is that, while creating such benefits for the public, governments used debt route to finance it. These measure did help in increasing the government expenditure, which in turn multiplied the effect on the economy. At the same time, it also created huge liabilities for the governments.
These debts now have become the cornerstone of the current crisis. The governments do not have sufficient monies even to service those debts. They have been over-leveraged.
As the solution for it and they will discuss, how fiscal deficits have ruined the economy. what is not realised is that these deficits were financed to create assets (huge infrastructure), which have no or neglible returns. That was a terrible waste of money. How have they solved it? By pumping more money in the economy, which is again raised by debt.
Now everybody wants to reduce deficits, that too not by raising incomes rather by cutting down the expenditure.... Whatta logic?
You reduce expenditure and that leads to reduction in income (as private investment/expenditure is already in doldrums), this will in turn lead to reduced tax revenues of the government. The government responds by reducing more expenditure. (that's cascading)
After long time, really good move was seen in the markets, i.e. reduction of deficit by combination of reducing expenditure and increasing of revenues. This was done by Italy on August 14, 2011.
Raising revenue is a good option. This was further reiterated by calls from Warren Buffett to increase tax revenues from super rich.
Lets hope, such sense spreads to other European and US economists too. One has to know that you cannot get rich by reducing expenses but by increasing revenues.
Reducing expenses will have multiplier effect on economy. Increased revenues will provide room to governments for maneuvering. Mindless austerity measures will not lead us anywhere, it will just shrink the economy. governments not only need to service their debts, they also need to have planned expenditure.
