I remember seeing a cartoon of this type when Ronald Reagan was President. It showed him in Lil Orphan Annie costume dancing in the rain and singing "The sun will come out tomorrow..."There were no mysterious figures standing behind him in that cartoon, though. He was all alone.
Reaganomics pulled us out of the miserable conditions brought on by the disastrous policies of the Carter administration. Indeed, the sun did come out, and it shone most brightly, with only a few storm clouds, right up until last year.
Unfortunately there are not enough people who remember...or maybe too many who choose not to remember...the long gas lines, the double-digit inflation, the double-digit unemployment, and the general feeling of malaise from 1976 to 1980. It was during this time that the term "misery index" became more than just an economic indicator, morphing into a painful reality.
What's funny is that Jimmy Carter campaigned on the idea that anyone (Pres Ford) who had caused the misery index to climb to such levels had no right to even ask to be President. By the time his mis-administration was over four years later, the misery index had almost doubled. (He had, of course, asked to be President again.)
Reagan pulled us out of the economic shambles not just by acting optimistic, but by doing the things that made the market react optimistically. Pres Obama seems to think that the rhetoric is enough.
The markets, however, aren't as optimistic.
2 comments:
I missed this post - it's excellent. Larry, for the life of me I can not comprehend how people who were THERE can have forgotten. I understand the idiot college and post-college kids who are too young to know any better than what they've been indoctrinated with, but for those of us who lived through it, there is no excuse.
And now we have a nobel laureate in economics (who, by the way, won for a very narrow aspect of the field and his political shit-stirring takes place decidedly OUTSIDE his area of expertise and is not actually economics at all) - this Paul Krugman character. He is actively working and writing about how Reagan did NO SUCH THING and these college kids, hearing an economist who has won a prize and is on the hard left, denying all of these things that you and I know to be true? Well they're beside themselves. Suddenly they're economists - or, worse, they tell us that we ought to remember that the "experts" know best. Of course they won't listen to any experts except those that tell the story they want to hear, even if it contradicts history. Scary, really.
On a side note, did you know that all negative facts about Obama have been removed from his Wikipedia page - any mention of Wright, Ayers, Khalidi, and so forth...and anyone who tries to mention them again will be barred from Wikipedia? As the Copious Dissent guy says, 10 years from now you mention Wright (even though, uh, he's openly out and about giving speeches and they were very close friends) you'll be thrown in a gulag. Probably by Wright himself. These are weird fucking times, Larry. Pardon my french, but it's REALLY weird.
History, failure to learn (from).
As much as I hate to say it, it's the Conservatives that are to blame. The Leftists took over the schools and universities, and we let them. We have played nice for 40 years now, and we are reaping what we have sown.
Next time I hear some leftist assclown say "Its for the CHILLLLdrennnnn!" I'm gonna kick it in the gazots.
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