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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239916)	12/15/2013 11:16:48 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542145

If you think that inflation at over 12% AND CLIMBING is not troublesome in the extreme you have no sense of what it does to business. Do you know what interest rates do housing for instance when it gets that high? Carter hd four years to do something and did nothing! So by doing nothing interest rates kept going up. Was it all Carters fault? Of course not - things just are never black and white like that. Reagans role was to support the fed, but he went further by sending a clear message - the rounds of higher and higher wages was over. My last post in part replied to this. But I will add this--that the supposedly "clear message" that Reagan sent that "the rounds of higher and higher wages was over" was in fact accomplished by Volcker's policies and economic necessity. Reagan didn't have to kill PATCO in order for that message to be "sent." Just as Walker didn't have to declare war on public unions in order to rein in WI's budget problems. There are different ways to deal with unions, one way is to actually negotiate and reason with them, the other way is the declare war on them. The second way can be a great way to lower wages in increase inequality throughout the country, and that is the way that Reagan, Walker and today's GOP generally takes. Swell.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239916)	12/15/2013 12:34:03 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542145

"So by doing nothing interest rates kept going up." You show a total ignorance of the history. Interest rates going up was due to the Volker "medicine" to conquer inflation - not due to Carter inaction. Volker jacked up the interest rates to FIGHT the inflation. en.wikipedia.org "The Federal Reserve board led by Volcker is widely credited with ending the United States' stagflation crisis of the 1970s. Inflation, which peaked at 13.5% in 1981, was lowered to 3.2% by 1983. [14] The Federal Reserve board led by *Volcker raised the federal funds rate*, which had averaged 11.2% in 1979, to a peak of 20% in June 1981. The prime rate rose to 21.5% in 1981 as well. Thus, the unemployment rate became up over 10%. The economy was restored since the tight-money policy was over in 1982. According to William Silber [15] "His policy of preemptive restraint during the economic upturn after 1983 increased real interest rates and pushed Congress and the president to adopt a plan [the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill] to balance the budget. The combination of sound monetary and fiscal integrity sustained the goal of price stability."" So, Steve, you don't even seem to understand what you lived through.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239916)	12/15/2013 2:04:08 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542145

Steve, you're welcome to hold the views you do but Sam and others have pointed out the opposing argument so many times and extremely well each time, you need to take their responses into account in your replies. Without that, you are simply talking to yourself. Never fun. On the inflation argument, Sam and others, including yours truly, have pointed out to you that Carter's appointee, Paul Volcker, started addressing the inflation issue and was well on the way to dealing with it before Reagan was elected. Reagan had the good sense to go along with the program. He didn't stop inflation; he simply went along with the program put in place by Carter's appointee. As for my preference for Kennedy, and to a lesser degree, Carter, over Reagan, I hardly see anything other than standard issue political preferences at stake here. If you can only deal with those kinds of differences by dropping the word "ideology" on it, using the word in its worst sense, that certainly ends all the conversations here.