Reagan insider: GOP destroyed U.S. economy, Part 2
marketwatch.com
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — “My G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece. Not “is destroying,” the GOP has “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse.” And it’s getting worse.
Update: With the 2012 election lineup up for grabs, Stockman may be the GOP’s best candidate for president. A hero in American politics, he’s a rare no-B.S. truth-teller who’s been delivering the same message since his 1986 “Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed,” an expose written after leaving the White House.
Better yet, he’s the kind of fighter who could easily go the distance with Obama on the key issues that will dominate the 2012 election: the economy, employment, interest rates, entitlements, war budgets, the devalued dollar, our rapidly collapsing monetary system, another meltdown.
Last fall, Stockman’s hard-hitting op-ed was loaded with jabs like: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt” screams “for austerity and sacrifice,” instead, the GOP insisted “the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.” Obama blinked, pulled his punch. Let’s get both in the ring. See Paul B. Farrell’s ‘Reagan insider: GOP destroyed U.S. economy.’
Stockman’s latest attack proves he’s still a powerful fighter. Recently, Reason magazine’s editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie did a long interview with Stockman. The title builds on the book: “The Triumph of Politics Over Economics.” But instead of just looking back at the failure of a self-destructive Reaganomics, an older and wiser Stockman focuses us on the paradigm shift that’s destroying America from within.
Warning: GOP’s self-destructive capitalism wrecking U.S. economy
In this new “Triumph of Politics Over Economics” we see America at a crossroads, struggling to redefine itself. Politicians have become the new economists. Politicians and their big money backers and lobbyists now rule the American economy like banana-republic dictators. Stockman calls this corrupt system the new “crony capitalism.” The old capitalist economics that made America the world’s greatest superpower no longer exist.
Today, professional economists are no more than hired guns for politicians with myopic ideologies and huge bankrolls that make it easy to justify lying, cheating and stealing from investors, workers, consumers, savers and taxpayers. Capitalism has morphed into a monopoly ruled by politicians who are serving a wealthy elite. Competition is a joke. Democracy is a farce. “We the People” no longer exists.
Stockman has seen all of it. And he knows that while his message hasn’t stopped the “GOP from destroying the U.S. economy,” the coming crisis will trigger another megacrash, bigger than the dot-com crash and subprime meltdown combined.
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