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The Krugman-bashing on Morning Joe continued unabated Wednesday, following Joe Scarborough and Paul Krugman's debate the other night on Charlie Rose's show. It seems the right has been looking for countries to prop up to prove that their calls for more austerity measures in the United States are not going to harm the economy and they've found at least one in the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia.

Scarborough started things off in the clip above by writing off our current economic circumstances as just another "period of deleveraging" where the United States needs to get its fiscal house in order with absolutely no reference to the fact that we should not be taking a series of booms and busts as the norm, or the part that deregulation and the dismantling all of the protections that were put in place following the Great Depression to attempt to prevent these types of cycles from happening again have played.

After Scarborough pointed out the fact that Americans and particularly young people are not longer racking up debt, but are also not spending and pumping money into the economy, his guest and CNBC regular Miles Nadal then moved onto the Krugman bashing:

NADAL: So when you say, are you positive on the economy, I'm positive in a cautious kind of way, but as Joe articulated on The Charlie Rose Show, which I thought was really a terrific debate, there are things on the horizon that are very scary. And I thought Paul Krugman's perspective was kind of, a little frightening in the sense that he didn't see any possibility of any Black Swan on anything that's happening and if you talk to any informed business person, that's not possible that you could completely eliminate the probability that nothing, including this multi-trillion dollar deficit would have no impact.

And as we articulated in the green room, nobody could run a company or a home the way the government is running things.

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Sometimes the bullshit just gets too much to bear, apparently. Minister Fornero began by saying the reforms were very strict, and that they were asking all Italians to sacrifice but then she could not continue, Prime Minister Monti finishing the remarks for her.

via Australia's News.com.au

Italy's Cabinet has adopted a package of tax hikes, budget cuts and pension reforms worth 20 billion euros ($27 billion) in a rush to avoid a bankruptcy that threatens to bring down the eurozone.

"This is a decree to save Italy," Prime Minister Mario Monti said at a press conference after the Cabinet meeting.

"This is a moment in which Italy risks being responsible for helping to drag down the economy of Europe."

Italy will "put its deficit and debt under strong control" so that the country is "not seen as a suspicious flash point by Europe", he said.

He also warned that Italians had to make "sacrifices" and said he was renouncing his own salary as prime minister in a gesture of solidarity.

The three-year package includes a controversial pension reform that will increase the minimum pension age for women to 62 starting next year and fall into line with men by 2018, by which time both will retire at 66.

The number of years that men have to pay contributions to receive their full pensions will also be increased from the current level of 40 to 42.

Welfare Minister Elsa Fornero, whose proposals have already been slammed by Italy's main trade unions, broke down in tears as she outlined the changes.

Below, in Italian, is what she said in the la Repubblicca video:

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