We say stimulus, they say cutbacks

For many finance ministers around the world, a budget just isn’t a budget these days if it doesn’t contain some all-important "fiscal stimulus." But not everyone is hip to the trend: Ireland and Poland, for example, are cutting costs in response the economic crisis rather than ramping them up. On Tuesday, Ireland announced it was slashing over $3 billion in government spending from its budget and Poland said it would shave nearly $7 billion from its budget. Both governments have cited the need to support their credit ratings as a reason for the cuts, especially given that the U.S. and other Western countries have begun flooding the market with sovereign debt.

The Wall Street Journal