It isn’t quite as extreme, but there are a lot of similarities between now and the Iraq debate. All of the Cool Kids know how fucking right austerity is, and are condescending to all of the silly children who think they’re wrong. Team Austerity is where the cool kids are, at the parties with the fancy drinks, and all the losers hang out at that dorky Paul Krugman’s house, playing dungeons and dragons.
In the highschool version of the analogy, 10 years later Paul Krugman has a Nobel Prize and all the cool kids still work at Ruby Tuesdays. But in the real world version all the cool kids just fail upwards, and so we get austerity because confidence!
Heckuva job, Brownie.
520 Chestnut 
…and if the cool kids win, teh others may never eat.