>>>The really sad thing is that no one is paying attention to how 'well' austerity is working in Europe right now. But hey, it'll work here 'cuz it hasn't so far!
>>
>>The 'austerity' is still only politicians take on things.
>>Europe is between criminal
>>(as in against the EU law or willfully falsifying - not that polititicians would allow some of their caste being tried)
>> and reckless spending for most of the countries. Not even germany had a "balanced" budget according to new rules
>>(only .5 new debt). If austerity is not working in europe it is because it is not done.
>
>Interesting that Germany and France have just posted better than expected growth figures while in the UK where the Conservatives are using austerity to promote growth (like that always works) there is no sign of any recovery whatsoever. It seems clear that the economies of the countries practising the most austerity (spain Greece UK etc) are tanking in a big way.

You surely are in a better position to classify UK state of things -
I know they were in a very comfortable debt/GDP range before 2008 and the bailouts.
Today I see UK at the same (slightly overdrawn level) as Germany -
with the side conclusion that the rise in debt % must have been fierce in the UK the last years.

While I have no clear idea on hidden budget risks due to future pensions, shadow positions and the
nowadays rising risk of default/central bank positions devalueing, I think UK to be in more trouble
just by the fact that much more of the economy is dependant on banking "industry", making more
internal bailout needs possible - not sure about cycle correlation, but defaults in EU gov bonds
probalby would hurt UK banks more than german ones, but not the gov itself due to less involvement
in €-saving attempts. But calling ~ 10% debt% rises per year austerity ?
Perhaps wrongly allocated, but surely not austerity ;-)

And Greece: Dunno where I read it, but they received >30K€ per capita in the last 2 years,
have still large percentage going to fraudulent issues and weasel again out of agreed upon positions -
austerity is something else.