INVESTORS who may once have doubted that euro-zone countries could right their public finances seem now to fear that crisis has spurred too much austerity. A handful of countries, notably Greece but also Spain, Portugal and Ireland, have been forced to take drastic action by nervy bond markets. To avoid a similar fate, Italy pledged in May to cut its budget deficit by €24 billion ($30 billion) by 2012.
Now even the most creditworthy are joining in. On June 8th Germany’s government announced a package of measures that will save it around €80 billion by 2014. Its chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Germany should set an example of budgetary discipline to other euro-zone countries. France has also said it will act to trim its deficit by abolishing tax exemptions and freezing most spending programmes from next year. This rush to don the hair-shirt raises a fresh concern: if budget cuts are too severe, might they push the economy back into recession, defeating their purpose?
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