News Release

Media Advisory: 350 Economists Will Warn Obama and Congress:

Unwise Deficit Reduction Could Kill Recovery. Economy Needs Growth and Jobs, Not Austerity.

Washington, DC --Warning that the U.S. economy in the post-election period is still “marked by mass unemployment, rising poverty, and declining wages.” 350 prominent economists will issue a statement on Wednesday, Nov 14 warning, “the fragile recovery is threatened by obsessive concern with cutting deficits that has infected both parties.”

The economists’ statement will highlight that drastic spending cuts adopted in a “grand bargain” aimed at avoiding sequestration could have such a contractionary impact on the still-fragile economy that the U.S. could join European countries in plunging into recession as a result of misguided austerity policies.

Telephone media conference: Wednesday, Nov. 14 , 2012 1 p.m. (ET )
Dial in for media: 1-800-311-9401 Code: CafCall

Speakers:
Robert Borosage, Campaign for America’s Future, co-director.
Robert Pollin, University of Massachusetts, Economist and co-director of Political Economy Research Institute (PERI)
Teresa Ghirarducci, Director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the The New School

Campaign for America’s Future co-director Roger Hickey and Robert Kuttner, founder of The American Prospect, who helped write and circulate the economists’ statement, will be on the call to answer questions.

The 350 economists are from universities and research groups in the US and around the world.