Claims of austerity have been greatly exaggerated

Krugman's making a claim that America's better economic performance- with respect to Europe- has been due to greater spending:

Specifically, in early 2010 austerity economics — the insistence that governments should slash spending even in the face of high unemployment — became all the rage in European capitals. 

and

countries that didn’t jump on the austerity train — most notably, Japan and the United States — continue to have very low borrowing costs, defying the dire predictions of fiscal hawks

but, did you know this?

After all, the usual suspects were quick to pronounce the idea of fiscal stimulus dead for all time after President Obama’s efforts failed to produce a quick fall in unemployment — even though many economists warned in advance that the stimulus was too small.  

The original Obama stimulus has been built into the budget so we have had multiple stimuli, and yet the growth did not come.  The way that this happened is that the Senate has refused to pass a budget, so the spending just goes onto the ever growing tab as a continuing resolution.  The last year's budget just gets passed on to next year, and so on and so on.   That's how the stimulus was a gift that never arrived, yet it kept costing more and more and more.

Europe's spending is much higher part of the GDP than the USA's, so the spending school does not work there either.  The problem, even though Krugman doesn't want to admit it, is an inability to pay for all the borrowing.  Greece can't service the debt.  Just adding more debt doesn't help matters.  It won't increase productivity, nor make prices go down.  It still costs money to buy stuff, and it still takes wealth to pay for things.  It doesn't grow on trees, no matter how many times Krugman may dream otherwise.