That is all fine and dandy except none of these govts were balancing their budgets to begin with anyways. So they ran on liberal policy of overspending and expansion of govt for decades. When a financial crisis hit their house of cards couldnt handle couldnt handle a sneeze from 3 feet away. To claim conservative policy is the reason for this is silly. These govts followed the doctrine of big govt and failed. The financial crisis exposed the underlying issues of putting the govt as central to an economy. Cuts hurt the economy, expansions cost too much for little gain.
Greece's problem were a result of what? Too much austerity or too much spending?
You can claim austerity measures are proving a catastrophe. That is fine. But realize they were forced on these countries due to their excessive govt's. They, the citizens, simply were\are unable to afford them anymore.
This is also just wrong. Every nation with its own currency could have continued deficit spending were it to have chosen to do so. Some opted for austerity measures, some did not. Nothing was 'forced'. What Europe and the UK are doing right now is explicitly conservative policy, and it is failing. The US has unfortunately not undertaken liberal economic policy, but has more just held the line on government spending. The US' economic performance through this crisis, while not good, has been far superior.
I am also tired of hearing about Greece, and the myth that these governments are somehow unaffordable. That is just clearly, utterly false. Greece is an example of extreme financial irresponsibility and are absolutely a case of government run amok. It also has basically no relation to the rest of the Eurozone or the US. Greece ran up huge debts in the years before the financial crisis.
What about Italy? They had a primary budget surplus before the crisis and a steadily decreasing debt/GDP ratio. Spain had a large budget surplus before the crisis and a debt/GDP ratio of 26%. How is Spain an example of austerity forced by excessive government? Spain has undertaken austerity measures after the financial crisis, and like everywhere else that it's been tried, conservative fiscal policy in this downturn is failing catastrophically. You don't get to blame liberals for that, their financial house was in order. You have to put the blame squarely where it lies, on foolish conservative economic policy. Not to mention that a number of the states with the largest proportion of government to the economy are doing just fine during this crisis. Why is it that the percentage of GDP consumed by government spending has basically no relationship with how they are faring? If government is 'simply unaffordable', this relationship should be crystal clear. It's not.
What we're seeing right now is that Europe and the US have undergone a grand social and economic experiment. We will see which policies work better in the end, and right now the US is winning by a country mile. Soon (or perhaps already) we will see conservatives desperately looking for reasons why it wasn't their ideology's fault that their policies failed in reality, which is sad.