Taking on Krugman once more

His claim is that the countries on the chart that were required to reduce their and deficit had lower growth. His X axis is mis-labeled, why does he call it austerity? If these nations were just fine then they could have raised taxes, even increased spending a bit, met the requirement and been just fine. The IMF in their brilliance says there was a change in their structural deficit. The chart implies their structural deficit was to large to begin with.

Governments in structural balance have no problem changing their deficit in response to interest rates hikes. Government in balance still have taxable reserves. So Krugman needs to change the X axis to stimulus, getting smaller to the right. Krugman is really saying that countries to the right should be stimulated by countries to the left, he just tries to hide the fact.
Stimulate, in this case, means to ease their path downhill.