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The hawks versus the deficit doves: austerity is the only game in town

Financial Times writer Martin Wolf assembled some of the world’s leading economists to debate the question which he thinks is the most important policy issue of the decade: is it right to cut government stimulus spending now?

Broadly in favour of the new austerity were Niall Ferguson (historian), Ken Rogoff (Princeton economist), Andy Xie (Shanghai) and Marty Feldstein (Harvard). Broadly against it were Martin Wolf (FT), Larry Summers (US government), Brad DeLong (Berkeley), Tim Harford (FT) , Monek Singh (Indian Planning Commission) and Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia).

With all those economists lined up end-to-end, did they reach a conclusion? Judge from the summary of the debate.