Etc.

Call it the "austerity class" or simply neoliberals, but in any case their ideas have ruined the country.

More about this:

Indeed, the austerity class has done such a good job of sidelining dissident voices—with the exception of the Times’s Krugman and a few other high-profile Keynesian economists—that the Washington debate seems permanently skewed to the right. “On one side you have deficit obsession to the point where Republicans use this as an excuse to threaten to shut the government down over a couple billion dollars,” says Bernstein. “On the other side you pretty much have people talking balance. You have no one on the other extreme saying, Our main worry about the deficit, with unemployment at 9 percent, should be: Is it large enough to provide the boost that the private sector is not capable of providing right now?”

It’s doubtful that Obama’s belated pivot back to jobs will break the power of the austerity class. The administration’s schizophrenic approach to the economic crisis has left voters perplexed about where it stands on the biggest issue of the day. “When you ask people, ‘What is Obama’s economic policy?’ they have no idea,” says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. “They think maybe it’s healthcare reform.” Obama’s latest position—more spending to boost the economy, followed by deficit reduction once the economy recovers—may be too nuanced for the public to grasp (some in the austerity class, in an attempt to retain credibility at a time of economic peril, now echo Obama’s view). “The Republicans’ message, ‘Government spending is a problem,’ is much easier to penetrate,” says the EPI’s Irons. “The administration is missing a simple point, which is that you need jobs to reduce the deficit.” That’s why the EPI advocates a moratorium on austerity measures until the unemployment rate is back down to 6 percent.