Back when we were running $1.4 trillion deficits and 750,000 people were losing their job each month, austerity was a political winner.
"There are hundreds of local examples of the impact of austerity, each unhappy in its own way, but it is only when they are viewed in aggregate that a picture emerges of an entire social infrastructure being destroyed".
Instead, Argentina has gone through wave after wave of fiscal austerity, each time with the promise that the latest round of wage and job cuts would restore confidence and produce economic recovery.
While Hollywood bean counters wring their hands and promise more austerity each time a movie such as John Carter haemorrhages cash, elsewhere in the world (Germany in this case) funds have somehow been raised for a labyrinthine assembly of interconnected, fractured existential vignettes with a cast packed with Oscar-winners and a near three-hour running time.
But council funding for KYM's open-access clubs has fallen each year since austerity kicked in – from £1.6m for universal youth services in 2010 to £860,000 for KYM's clubs today – and the organisation is struggling to secure new revenue streams.
IF you drive in any direction from Guimarães — to the northern and eastern borders with Spain, or out to the Atlantic coast — the countryside is rich in pousadas: mostly convents and monasteries, each reflecting the austerity and isolation of this region in the Middle Ages.
Two contrasting sessions provide a masterclass in the politics of the age of austerity, each so eloquently accessible that had they been televised instead of the leaders' debates, one can't help feeling the electorate would have been far better equipped to know how to cast their vote.
With each year of austerity, it becomes harder for councils to identify fresh savings.
In U-turn after U-turn the Greeks had, over the course of the negotiations, included more and more austerity in each offer, despite pre-election pledges to reverse spending cuts.
Nearly all the rest went to parties that oppose the austerity deal but also despise each other.
