BBC World Service, this is Michael Blasland with the inquiry.

This week, has austerity worked.

On Monday 15 September September 2008 a banker called Mo Grimay went to his office at

745 7th Avenue in Manhattan. The trading floor was packed he told

Bloomberg business but people were not working.

Some were crying, some drinking beer, some were doing shots of tequila.

Mr Grime worked for Lehman Brown. Some were doing shots of tequila.

Mr Grime worked for Lehman Brothers, a once vast bank which had just filed for bankruptcy,

the largest corporate failure in US history.

The collapse of Lehmans was part of a financial meltdown that set off a global

economic crisis. Now, years later, the world is still arguing about how to deal with the fallout.

And at the heart of that argument is one word, austerity.

Austerity is shorthand for dealing with the costs of an economic downturn by trying to cut government borrowing,

either by raising taxes or cutting spending.

The alternative, often described as stimulus, is to pump more

borrowed money into the system for longer to boost the economy in the belief

that it will grow its way out of trouble.

The argument between these ideas is old,

but in the aftermath of the economic crisis,

it came back, with a vengeance.

After a period of relative consensus up to 2010, some countries inclined

more to austerity, some against. Now looking back, our question, can we settle this decades-old debate?

...