Victoria Chick and Ann Pettifor show that austerity increases indebtedness in U.K.

The British economists Victoria Chick who is an expert on Keynes , Professor Emeritus University College Dept. of economics and her colleague Ann Pettifor(Fellow of London based New Economics Foundation) have demonstrated by analysing 80 years of data on the British debt and government expenditures that there is a strong correlation between the adoption of austerity policies and increases in indebtedness as measured by the debt to GDP ratio. They discuss their work in a piece on Bloomberg news which is available at http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aJdIFZIoLjL4. Their conclusion comes as no surprise to those of us who understand the role of government expenditures as a major component of aggregate demand in an economic downturn. It is one more crucial piece of evidence that British politicians  ought not to ignore as the Cameron Clegg coalition sets about slashing expenditures.