A story on how balanced budgets have caused the Canadian economy to boom. From which this:

We have a lot of cases available to us to test the proposition that we will increasingly be hearing that balancing the books is over-rated. If the all-stimulus-all-the-time Keynesians are correct, for example, France should be the strong man of Europe, for its Socialist president came to power rejecting “austerity” and preaching the virtues of stimulus. Britain, which pursued a course of fiscal discipline under the coalition government of David Cameron, should be in steep decline.

Instead the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, recently had to apologise to Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer for having wrongly warned that his austerity policies would provoke disaster, as Britain turns in one of the strongest economic performances in the EU. Overtaxed and tapped out France, by contrast, continues to be the sick man of Europe. Interviewed on British television Ms Lagarde acknowledged that Britain’s growth seems “pretty sustainable” because it depends on private sector investment and consumer spending.

Economic theory of the Y=C+I+G variety has a lot to answer for. Balanced budgets accompanied by limited growth in public spending are the key to prosperity. The opposite can be seen everywhere in the misery and harm that are caused (see the US for exhibit A). Canada and the UK are now examples of how private sector growth along with what others choose to call “austerity” actually do create the foundations for economic growth.