Carmen Reinhart & Ken Rogoff, the two economists who influenced the "austerity drive" that most Western governments, predominantly the US, have been enforcing in the last three or so years, made an error in their calculations in a spreadsheet. "How much unemployment did Reinhart and Rogoff's arithmetic mistake cause? asks Dean Baker, in the Guardian
If facts mattered in economic policy debates, this should be the cause for a major reassessment of the deficit reduction policies being pursued in the United States and elsewhere. It should also cause reporters to be a bit slower to accept such sweeping claims at face value.
