Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadywood
Anybody around here old enough to remember the Carter inflation?
Every night, there was some genius PhD guy on your TV, wringing his hands and acting like 20% inflation was just some kind of bad weather: "Nobody knows for sure where it comes from or what to do about it. Oh, there's lots of theories..."
And then Reagan came in and said, "Well, I'll be darned -- somebody left the magic money machine running over at the FED! Lemme just shut that stupid thing off, and things will get back to normal in no time!"
18 months later, it was over.
Funny thing, though. The genius PhD guys never did connect the dots between the Gooberment printing massive piles of money, and the money being worth less. So they invented "Modern Monetary Theory", which basically says the best way to guarantee government freebees for everyone is to crank up the magic money machine! Our last three genius FED chair-guys&gals have been big proponents of "MMT".
And son-of-a-gun, umpteen-trillion-dollars later, we've got inflation again! Whodathunkit!
As Churchill said, "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it".
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Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981, so the first fiscal year (FY) he budgeted was 1982 and the final year was 1989. During Reagan's presidency, the federal debt held by the public nearly tripled in nominal terms, from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion.
The above is not a political statement, it is historical fact. "Those who fail to remember history....."