American austerity: govt spending falling under Obama

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/the-secret-of-our-non-success/

“Obama, far from presiding over a huge expansion of government the way the right claims, has in fact presided over unprecedented austerity, largely driven by cuts at the state and local level. And it’s therefore an amazing triumph of misinformation the way that lackluster economic performance has been interpreted as a failure of government spending.”