“With the obvious global meltdown of Keynesian economics, how could anyone remotely intelligent support the continued deficit spending that is driving the Western World into bankruptcy?”
Intelligence has little to do with it (regardless of how inflated the average leftist’s view of his or her IQ happens to be). Your posted poster says it best — it could be a mental disorder. The kinder answer is that people become “paradigm bound”.
Another answer is that Keynesian economics hasn’t been practiced anywhere for decades — if ever. We’ve never actually seen Keynesianism. If Keynes were alive today, he might be standing on street corners holding a large sign that proclaimed: “I am not a Keynesian”.
Keynes advocated increased government spending, when the economic cycle was in a trough — and, then savings when the cycle was nearing a peak. He also recommended the use of reserve accounts (savings) where possible, rather than debt. For decades, we’ve seen nothing but deficit spending to “stimulate” economies — never savings to cool over-heated economies. Also, the spending was supposed to be for useful things — largely infrastructure. The idea being to build it sooner (for stimulus), and then cut back the spending later (for savings). Contrast that with “stimulus” programs comprising hundreds of billions of wasted dollars.
It is plain (to me, at least) that Angela Merkel is more influenced by the Austrian School economists, than she is by (so-called) Keynesiansm. That would explain why she (along with Canada's PM Harper) is championing austerity. She's looking at the problem, and solutions, from a the perspective of a different theory (paradigm) than the leftists who are still bound by the “Keynesian” paradigm.