Who's pursued "austerity at all costs though"? The UK are still running a budget deficit of nearly £80 billion. Down from £150 billion in 2010. Sure there have been cuts, but not as huge as some people would have you think. The US continued stimulus for longer, and then had some pretty steep cuts because of the gridlock, and not renewing various tax cuts.
Now austerity at all costs was imposed on Greece. With truly disastrous results. But even then, there was an alternative. If Greece were willing to leave the Euro, they could have a sane economic policy.
Ireland, Spain and Portugal have had some pretty heavy cuts though. But again - that's more part of being in an unworkable currency union and trying to force economics to submit to politics. Which they're still managing to do - but I'm not sure how long they can keep it up. Of course they only made less than half the cuts that Greece was forced to, and 2 of them are back to growth.
The really ideological austerity fetishists are in Germany. Who are running a budget surplus, despite having the cheapest government borrowing in their history available - and infrastructure investment at a low. But they're also running at historically low levels of unemployment and huge levels of exports. Actually I'd argue that's a bad thing, Germany is becoming a less equal society and damaging the Euro because of it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
