The disaster of axiomatic macroeconomic thinking

This is something I published recently on the European Tribune

On Friday (22nd February), Moody's downgraded the UK's credit rating by a notch. That is actually a non-event. Rating agencies clearly play to an ideological agenda (for instance, they consistently give a higher rating to a private company than to a state for a similar level of risk), and it's hard to see in what circumstances the UK, a country with its own central bank emitting fiat money, could default.
What makes it somewhat more interesting is that UK's chancellor, George Osborne, reacted that way :

"Tonight we have a stark reminder of the debt problems facing our country - and the clearest possible warning to anyone who thinks we can run away from dealing with those problems," he said. "Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.
"We will go on delivering the plan that has cut the deficit by a quarter, and given us record low interest rates and record numbers of jobs."
[...]
"As the rating agency says, Britain faces huge challenges at home from the debts built up over many, many years, and it is made no easier by the very weak economic situation in Europe.
"Crucially for families and businesses, they say that 'the UK's creditworthiness remains extremely high' thanks in part to a 'strong track record of fiscal consolidation' and our 'political will'.
[...]
"They also make it absolutely clear that they could downgrade the UK's credit rating further in the event of 'reduced political commitment to fiscal consolidation'.
"We are not going to run away from our problems, we are going to overcome them."

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Now, this got some reactions. Paul Krugman, Mark Thoma, Simon Wren-Lewis(and many others I'm sure) quickly wrote about this, and made very good, and damning, points. What I would like to focus on is the fact that this could even be said, the assumptions (spoken or unspoken) that Osborne's statement carried with it. Incredibly, they are by many not seen as assumptions, or points of contention, or even hard-acquired knowledge. Rather, they are there as undisputable facts of life that everyone knows. I will list the ones that come to me, but will surely miss some that you may want to add.

Welcome all

Hello everyone!

To be fair, this is mostly a test at this stage. It will probably take me a little while to work you what I can do and how, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

Anyway, if you're reading this, welcome to Anachronicles.

It's in English though I'm French because I have noticed that many more of the French speakers I know speak English than English speakers speak French. But there may be a few posts in French, so those French classes in high school could come in handy after all.

As for the name, well... 
I quite frequently feel out of synch with our times on many a thing. And since I don't pretend to have invented all that much, then one could venture that my emotions would be more in synch, on that issue, with some other times, past or future (yes, I know we can't know the future, but for instance one could argue that the suffragettes were more in synch with the future on their favourite topic). Hence the anachronism. And since by essence a blog is constructed as chronicles, well, there we are.

By the way, a feeling of gap with the times should never morph into the illusion of there having ever been an ideal times to which we should revert. We are probably more attuned to different epochs for different subjects. One can be greatly influenced by fourth century Athens while remembering that they had slaves (I'm assuming my readers will agree that this was a negative. Corporate overlords may beg to differ); one can like the increase class solidarity in the West in the aftermath of the second world war, while remembering that at the time, the trees of the south still bore strange fruit.
This is about the beats that our times miss, not about the idealisation of a mythical past.