I'll back you up and say I agree completely with your austerity post. It's a horrible idea. That's the problem that I have with what happened in the 2000s in the U.S. After the country was showing a surplus, and unemployment was so low, and the economy was booming in the late 90s, that's when the spending should have been cut, and taxes on the wealthy raised. Instead we accelerated the increase in debt by massively increasing spending and massively cutting taxes on the wealthy. Then the complete lack of financial regulation led to the collapse of the worldwide financial industry and the housing debacle we find ourselves digging out of now.
So basically what happened was we kept spending and low taxes when things were going great, and when they collapsed we had magnified the debt so badly that there wasn't the ability (or will) to massively spend by the government to end the recession (depression?) quickly.
Bingo!
You're making money and your people is making easy money. Pay those debts and save some money for when the country is going down. Bush trashed all this money in I-don't-know-what and now, you're stuck with a guy trying to repair all the damages.
I love the Norwegian model exactly for that. They found oil and easy money. What do they do? They build one of the biggest fund around here and save money for worst days. Last time I checked, their fund was estimated to 500 billion$. The day they go in crisis, they can simply subsidize their population for a couple of years, waiting for the economy to get better. This country is almost immune to any economic crisis.