article: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras came to power on a wave of public anger over austerity measures, and he is urging the Greek people to vote against austerity once more in a snap referendum on the country's debt crisis to be held on Sunday. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people took part in anti-austerity demonstrations across the UK in June despite the government's insistence that austerity measures are vital to cutting the deficit. Many countries decided to cut spending and put up taxes to deal with the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis. Were they right? Has austerity worked? Four experts offer their assessment. Former BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders is now chief market strategist for JP Morgan Asset Management. "In 2009 we suddenly found ourselves in a much steeper recession than people thought, and the impact was suddenly very clear on the public finances. It pushed up budget deficits all over the world - particularly in the UK - by tens of billions. "No one was making any money or paying any tax, meanwhile the unemployment numbers were going up quite quickly and that was pushing up costs. There was a moment leading up to the G20 summit in London in 2009 where leaders said 'we've got to have a global co-ordinated stimulus'. "They were all on one side saying, 'we've got to not worry too much about borrowing going up, because governments are the only ones who can afford to do this at a time when households and companies are also cutting back'. "[As a result] you saw the start of a recovery in most countries, and at the same time these horrendous borrowing numbers were coming in which we hadn't ever seen in peace time. And there were mutterings: 'Hang on, we're going to face an awful lot of pain to get that down, shouldn't we start doing that now?'. "So they faced that dilemma: 'we've saved the economy, how quickly do we start to raise taxes again and cut spending to get our public finances in order and how quickly can we afford to do that without hurting this still fragile recovery?' "If you think the economy is going to carry on growing, then you want to take a bit of that growth and start to put it back into the government coffers. "You want to have taxes going up, certainly some plans to rein in spending, but of course the contrary argument is you can't assume that growth, because some of it is coming from what you're doing to prop up the economy. "Unless you know that there's going to be other demand out there to make up the gap, you might face the economy slipping back into recession and then the borrowing is going be even worse. "If the international lenders start to worry about whether you're going to pay it back, they start to charge you more interest, and if they charge you more interest, then your interest rates of course go up, and that pushes up your borrowing as well - you might be
summary: At the heart of the current Greek debt crisis is an old debate - is it better to cut spending and raise taxes in an economic downturn, or spend your way out of it?