Republicans have made a huge effort to indoctrinate Americans into believing that Reagan won the Cold War. If they can get people to swallow the myth that Reagan was an international relations god, then people will be well-disposed to swallowing their myths on the economy, e.g. tax cuts alone will enable us to break out of our economic doldrums.
Speaking of tax cuts, giving them to wealthy people only results in more money being transferred to Wall Street, but giving them to families earning less than $50,000 per year will result in an immediate boost to the economy because they will spend it on food, clothing, and other mundane items.
Until recently Germany was the world's leading exporter, but China has just barely squeaked ahead. The USA is the third largest exporter, yet it is 28 times as large as Germany with a population 4 times as large as Germany. Germany achieves this with an unemployment rate "only half a percentage point higher in 2009 than it was in 2008." Sounds like we need to forget the lessons of Reagan and start following those of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
And let's not forget that Reagan dumped Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and replaced him with Alan Greenspan. Volcker had reduced inflation from more than 11% to under 4%, but Reagan wanted someone who abhorred regulation. All of the following presidents -- Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II -- retained Greenspan and his childlike belief in deregulation. Greenspan said one year ago in reference to our meltdown "We have to recognize that this is almost surely a once-in-a-century phenomenon, and in that regard, to realize the types of regulation that would prevent this from happening in the future are so onerous as to basically suppress the growth rate in the economy and . . . the standards of living of the American people." This sounds a lot like economist Irving Fisher who famously said just before the 1929 crash that stock prices had "reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Greenspan has proven himself to be incompetent and should be ignored. If Reagan was a god, was he Pandora who opened the wrong box?
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