The ECB contends that the core economies of the global North – Germany, France, Britain, the United States, and Japan – are now at the point where they need rapid fiscal retrenchment and austerity, because financial markets’ confidence in the quality of their debt is shaken, and may collapse at any moment. And policymakers are falling into line: in late July, Peter Orszag, Director of the US Office of Management and Budget said that the coming fiscal consolidation in the US over the next three years will be the country’s deepest retrenchment in 60 years.