David Stockman's Stark Warning for America

Quote:
David Stockman, formerly a leading conservative Reaganite, now blames some of the economic program that he once supported for the 2008 meltdown and sluggish recovery.

Q: The GOP program has the supply-side, low-tax position at its core. If it won't generate the results they promise, why is it still such a part of the Republican agenda?

A: Because Republicans claim that we had this great Golden Age in the 1980s, that there was a boom in the 1990s, and that everything was going well during the George W. Bush era until some mysterious comet came in from deep space and caused a meltdown in 2008. My argument is that this was mostly a phony prosperity built on massive additions to public and private debt. That so-called prosperity came from the printing press in the Eccles Building run by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.

Q: But if cutting taxes doesn't create a roaring economy, why did people such as Wanniski and Jack Kemp champion this idea for so long?

A: Jude argued that there would be an instantaneous shock of higher gross domestic product on merely the announcement of tax cuts -- even before they were implemented.

Q: Rep. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, cites Kemp as his mentor. What's your assessment of Ryan?

A: He's all hat and no cattle. Beyond that, I think he's intellectually dishonest. His budget plans are bogus.


[Linked Image]