At least according to a note by Richard Koo of Nomura Securities over at Zero Hedge :

Premature fiscal consolidation is a threat to democracy

Pushing ahead with these misguided policies risks a collapse of social and economic foundations and could even threaten the survival of democratic structures. A good example is prewar Germany’s Brüning cabinet, which insisted on fiscal retrenchment and allowed the emergence of Hitler in the 1930s. The risk is especially high in Central and Southern European countries, which have a relatively short history of democracy.

Ultimately, I think the reason so many academics and pundits do not trust current low yields on government debt and expect them to rise suddenly is that they do not trust the market economy. When a price level set by the market persists for many years, we need to realize that there is an underlying economic structure supporting those prices.

What governments—including Japan’s new administration—should be thinking about is how to find promising public works projects and implement them in order to offset the deflationary pressures from private-sector deleveraging and provide the private sector with a sense of direction.

When private loan demand is nonexistent, the government must do whatever is necessary to find and carry out promising public works projects (including education and environment-related projects) without worrying about tax hikes.

It would appear that Europe’s new found desire to call a halt to ever expanding sovereign debt prompted that comment from Koo :

Apparently the lack of a European desire to hit the Nitrokeynesian button and go all in on a bet Keynes is right (or, gasp, wrong) has made Koo so furious …

In essence, Koo, a devout Keynesian, is taking the false religion’s argument one step further to its logical conclusion: that any change, be it today, tomorrow or whenever, will ultimately result in the collapse of the developed world’s social fabric, once societies realize they have been fooled for ages by a ruling oligarchy of kleptrocrats. That, we agree with wholeheartedly.

This appears to becoming another religious style crusade, much like the global warming debate, where the devout zealots on either side call the other side worshippers of false gods destined to burn for eternity in whatever version of fiscal hell they are imagining. The worst version I can think of would be being forced to work for the HMRC call centre for eternity but that would probably be seen as too cruel and unusual even for the most unrepentant sinner.