This is a banking crisis first and a sovereign debt crisis second. That there is a crisis in sovereign debt markets, especially in Europe, is not in doubt. But that is an effect, not a cause. There was no orgy of government spending to get us there. There never was any general risk of the whole world turning into Greece. There is no risk of the United States ever going bust anytime soon. There is no crisis of sovereign debt caused by sovereigns' spending unless you take account of actual spending and continuing liabilities caused by the rupture of national banking systems. What begins as a banking crisis ends with a banking crisis, even if it goes through the states' accounts. But there is a politics of making it appear to be the states' fault such that those who made the bust don't have to pay for it. Austerity is not just the price of saving the banks. It's the price that the banks want someone else to pay.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 40