This couple gave of themselves.
On topic, Pres Carter assigned Volcker to the FED. If Reagan had to do that Reagan would have paid the price not Carter. There was a lot of BS involved later. Jimmy Carter was an excellent president. Small minds were easily filled with petty little crap that he was not.
Rosalynn Carter thank you.
Inflation had increased during the Carter term up to 12% before Volker was appointed. The Misery Index had already been invented by Okun.
DB2
Volcker was appointed chair end of July 1979. Just is that it is.
If Reagan had to appoint Volcker then it would have doomed Reagan.
Carter knew his presidency was over if he appointed Volcker.
Petty minds blamed Carter for the inflation. Meanwhile, Reagan put us on a 40 year path towards $33 trillion in debt. He tore down manufacturing in the US as much as he could. He lied about tax breaks. He said we were getting the best and the brightest in his admin which was just BS.
Reagan did nothing for the United States of America. He took from the American public and made the suckers feel good about it.
Main Street paid the entire price of it. Main Street was duped for 40 years into thinking they would get a tax cut. I mean any lie imaginable was told to mom and pops on Main Street for the brazen laugh.
The spiral began long before. Nixon instituted price controls (failure) and Ford passed out Whip Inflation Now buttons (?), so yes, somebody had to do something serious to get it under control. That bout had become institutionalized within the system, something the current bout was not - but may have been on the verge. Once it gets kick started and wages go up and/or energy prices go up and/or …. It’s devilishly hard to get back in the bottle, if mixing of metaphors is allowed.
It was seriously out of control in the late 70’s, and Carter did what was necessary, and what probably sank his Presidency (although the Iran hostages could vie for the title) by appointing Volker and accepting that interest rates would have to be crushing, at least for a while.
In fairness, shorter after his inauguration Carter also appointed William Miller to replace Arthur Burns, and Miller was a total flop. His idea was “more investment” rather than “less inflation”. When that didn’t work - and contrary to the mantra of Fed independence, Jimmy pushed him out and appointed Volker, who promised to take on inflation. And did. And won. And Jimmy lost.
Do not leave out LBJ, who idiotically took us deep into Vietnam and paid for both “guns and butter” on credit, setting off two decades of economic trouble and ending the opportunity of extending the New Deal coalition into high tech territory.
d fb
None of the above.
Socialism done wrong as the welfare state of FDR was the culprit. The best of intentions.
Fixed interest rates and with Truman a top bracket with a 90% tax rate.
The fixed rates did not fight inflation by the 1960s and 70s.
The tax rate created an elite who fought any taxation it was so dreadful to them.
The timing of Truman’s top bracket rate was really bad. Because it could only come down over time as inflation perked up. Taxes lost their position as a tool to fight inflation.
The two tools to make us more productive as a nation that was socialist were forgone.
Socialized medicine is economically very efficient.
A national pension system that is more robust than SS.
The problem of private corporate pensions made the US corporations insolvent by 1979.
The underpinning of the system was the low-interest rate government bonds of the 1950s. The main holders were private pension funds. A disaster by 1979.
Well, yes, Iran would have sunk his re-election chances no matter what inflation was doing.
However, my earlier point was that inflation was raging out of control and damaging the economy as well as the guy in the White House. Consider the counterfactual – what if Arthur Burns had been reappointed by Carter? Would that have changed his election chances? I don’t think so.
DB2
That probably is not true. Obama got Osama bin Laden and the public did not care by election day. Iran was not so much American politics. The news loved reporting it but people would have well moved on by election day.
You are trying to make a case that Carter was a bad president. He did not cause the Iranian revolution. He did not cause the inflation. He actually did more to solve the inflation by far than did Reagan. The inflation dramatically mattered.
Reagan did not bring down the Berlin Wall. People in Berlin just laugh at us for believing that one. Twisting the news might help a president but in the history books, Reagan is turning into a zero. Not one person today mentions supply-side economics in any sort of way as a success or runs for office on complete nonsense and lies making any claims about supply-side econ. Today Reagan would never gain office. Carter would if he was young enough to run. He is loved, he is honest, and frankly extremely intelligent. Reagan was gullible and pushy spreading lies.
There is not one economic policy that Reagan pushed that was honest and did not fail the US economy. He was a creep. He constantly presented things that were meant to capture votes instead of being honest about his huge shortcomings as president. Just twist it and dumb people will support it.
Well, Carter’s administration was burdened by many factors, including the previous administration depreciation of the office of the Presidency ( in the public’s view).
TFG took the opportunity to castigate Carter as soon as he heard that Rosalynn was on the verge of passing:
Former President Donald Trump mocked former President Jimmy Carter at an event in Iowa one day after the Carter family publicly confirmed former first lady Rosalynn Carter enter hospice care
I happen to like much of what Carter tried to do, though he often wasn’t very effective at doing it. But equating the Iran hostage crisis with the killing of Osama bin Laden isn’t a solid comparison. The hostage crisis was in the news every day in a time when there were limited news outlets. Everyone who watched the news saw it and was reminded of it. And it was very much ongoing during the 1980 election. The crisis didn’t end until January 1981- after the election. Killing Osama bin Laden occurred nearly a decade after the hijackings; the U.S. had already been through the Iraq fiasco and was years into its Afghan adventures. In May 2011, Obama’s re-election was eighteen months away. Furthermore, the news landscape had been fractured; it was increasingly possible for Americans to watch/listen/read entirely different versions of the “news” and to believe themselves informed. That trend, of course, has become more pronounced now.
Then put it this way W got us into two wars and still did not find Osama bin Laden yet W got reelected. It is hypocritical every time the Republicans demand us to worry about something.
I understand your point about GWB, though again, timing and context are important. The Iran hostage crisis and the failed rescue attempt did real damage to the public’s perception of the competence of the Carter administration. Bush did indeed bring us into two wars, though it is extremely likely that any administration would have done the same in Afghanistan after the hijackings (and it would have been supported by the public). Iraq was the war of choice. And of course, by November 2004, neither one had deteriorated as badly as they would later on. So Americans didn’t view them as they would in 2008. Regarding timing, if Hurricane Katrina had hit in 2004 instead of 2005, GWB might not have been reelected; that damaged his administration badly. But it didn’t, and we got four more years of him.
This is ancient history for the average American voter and for many politicians.
That is the beauty of it. No solution on economics is being offered right now. The last 40 years of supply-side econ is seen as a disaster for our economy. Especially by major business owners. There were minor to no investments in heavy industry. There was offshoring and tax breaks for the wealthy that hastened that.
There is not one person running on supply-side economics today. No one has the courage. Solutions that are the same were hidden from the public in 2022.
There is only so much economic destruction the American public will put up with.
Meanwhile, we are seeing a huge uptick in our factory buildout which takes infrastructure to create. The idea of retarding our economy to create a Jim Crow state is on the table in some quarters.
We see a reversion in some wishing like Jefferson did that the slaves on his plantation would pay off his debts. He died deeply in debt. He was very reckless. Plus he was a bold liar many times over.
The northern business class worried Jefferson a lot because he borrowed from them. Jefferson never cared for the industrial base. He cared for a life of leisure while others slaved for him. He was not reality-bound.
