REAGAN DID IT!!

Believe it or not, I hear through the grapevine that some right wing people I know actually think that President Obama is somehow responsible for the financial debacle that we entered into starting last September, when he wasn't even elected yet, let alone serving as president. Hopefully, thanks to Barack Obama's policies, now, we are beginning the climb out of the sink hole of the last thirty years of unregulated "Voodo Economics."

But why listen to me when you can listen to a recent Nobel Prize winning economist for a dose of reality?

Paul Krugman is that economist, and he is a columnist for the New York Times. He has written a perfectly clear and articulate op-ed piece, called "REAGAN DID IT" explaining how Ronald Reagan began his own reverse revolution in 1980 that has led to the worst economic crisis in this country in 80 years.

Here's an excerpt:

“This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. ... All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.'

"So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.

"He was, as it happened, wrong about solving the problems of the thrifts. On the contrary, the bill turned the modest-sized troubles of savings-and-loan institutions into an utter catastrophe. But he was right about the legislation’s significance. And as for that jackpot — well, it finally came more than 25 years later, in the form of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

"Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence."

Thanks, Paul Krugman.

You can also read two pieces written by me on this blog about Reaganomics at the links below:
FROM RAMBO TO McCAIN: THE END OF THE REAGAN REVOLUTION

THE GIPPER VERSUS FULL PERMISSION LIVING