The US frequently goes through regional recessions. One part of the country slumps because of the failure of some industry, or the fluctuation of commodity prices, or natural disaster. But since social insurance is largely federal – medicare, SNAP, TANF, social security – they continue despite the weak local economy, as do big-ticket federal spending items: highways, agriculture, student loans, etc. All told, these programs combine to guarantee a minimum of income to recession-hit areas, smoothing out some of the bumps along the road that every economy suffers from time to time.

Local economies in Las Vegas, Miami and Phoenix were ground zero for the worst financial crisis in 75 years – but they had a safety net to ensure that their recession had a bottom. Six years later, they are growing again, fast as ever. The US economy as a whole added more jobs in 2014 than in any year since 1999. The cost was significant – the US ran trillion-dollar deficits for several consecutive years, with President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner resisting pressure to reduce deficit spending too much too soon in the face of the worst economy since World War II.

The European Union operates very differently. While the currency is federalized – controlled by a single central bank, the ECB – social programs and government spending are almost entirely dependent on the finances of individual countries.

Ground zero for the financial crisis in the European Union was Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. On the eve of the crisis, they were all up-and-coming economies, seeing fantastic year-over-year growth. That kind of growth lures investors – and banks made progressively riskier loans in the hope of cashing in on the boom. You could tell the same story about Vegas, South Florida and Arizona through 2007.

But when the recession hit, the European Union had a very different plan for its hardest-hit countries. Instead of increasing government spending, and allowing them to run deficits – as every liberal economist urged – the ECB called for the exact opposite. With many countries unable to raise the cash to meet their obligations to creditors, the ECB would only underwrite further lending if those countries practiced “austerity.” To avoid default, they were forced to cut government spending dramatically – at a time when people and businesses had no money to spend either. Government programs of every stripe were cut back or eliminated.

At the time, conservative economists theorized that countries who drastically cut government spending would find the bottom of their recession more rapidly, and would bounce back that much faster. For the US they predicted “debasement of the dollar,” “hyper-inflation” and a prolonged slump.

Liberals at the time warned that austerity would send weak European economies into full-fledged depressions, and be a drag on growth across the EU. They projected that deficit-spending would save the US from a much deeper recession, and while the US would come out on the other side with more debt, it would also have many more jobs. Liberal economists dismissed the threat of inflation entirely, warning instead of the threat of deflation in Europe.

Years later, liberals theories have been borne out, resoundingly. The US rebounded faster and stronger than Europe, and inflation remained near historic lows all along. In Europe, conservative policies have proved to be an abject failure – as liberals also foresaw. Time will tell whether the Euro itself will survive years of conservative mismanagement.

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