Second, if the only policy on offer is to get the government out of economic affairs completely, then its not clear how one does it short of engaging in a kind of “year zero” purge of the modern economy and polity. Similarly, the notion of relying on “real savings” rather than “artificial credit” would require the abolition of fractional reserve banking—where the bank lends out multiples of its reserves—and therefore an end to, for example, securitization, car loans, education loans, mortgages, and so on. It’s hard to see this as either welfare improving or politically sustainable in any meaningful sense.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 400