How to kill an economy stone dead. The Europeans choked off the Greek economy by incredibly harsh "austerity" measures that really hacked away at government spending. Harper further depressed a Canadian economy that had been struggling since the 2008 crash by slashing federal spending in an effort to manufacture a "surplus" - the operation was a success but the patient nearly died. The only way that Obama or anybody else could resurrect the US economy after Dubya was by the injection of huge amounts of cash.