I suspect the author knows about AE.
He does not go out into the Austrian world as he would have come right out and said that the whole mess is entirely the fault of central banking and artificial credit. But from his paragraph on the responses and its lack of enthusiasm I inferred that he does not believe the Monetarist or Keynesian arguments either or has changed his mind on them to be more suspect.
After all he is employeed by The Economist so I did not expect him to badmouth the central banks.
What he does not do is suggest solutions. This is really where the Austrians are at the forefront. What amazes me about the Keynesian “solution” of infinite spending is that Japan tried a limited Keynesian soultion (The could not make their currency worth zero as it would have caused a run on the country and an outflow of capital) and the result was what 20 years and counting of economic stagnation.
All the article is saying is that, surprise surprise, there are troubles in the Western world being created by all that debt. So yes, I guess that is a little bit AE-like, since Keynsians love debt no matter what.
But in the 5 places where the author ventures an opinion about things, he is completly non-AE. To wit:
-
“governments have correctly stepped in to support banks and save the economy from falling into depression.” Correctly?
-
“All governments face the tricky balance of appeasing the markets without damaging growth” It’s the govts job to do that? And it can do that?
-
“For policymakers, the priorities are clear. First, they need to focus on generating growth.” So policymakers can generate growth. OK.
-
“But if one lot of people saves, another must borrow.” Where did this come from?
-
“getting China to save less is a huge task (see article). All the same, a shift is in everybody’s long-term interest—and the younger parts of the world should be the borrowers.” What is he talking about?