Obama says he inherited economic problems

Most of the lists I have seen list Jimmy Carter at around 14th worst. There were some really bad Presidents, like Grant who presided over some of the worst corruption the government has seen. Carter was bad, but he wasn't nearly as bad as some others.
 
Do you have the link to the whole SOU handy? Or should I go look it up and put this in context?

LOL

Where are Yurt & GL w/ the "must defend Reagan...must defend Reagan."

Feel free to put it in context, and make sure you have your micro-parser handy to tell me how it is somehow different from Obama's comments...
 
Please check any list of worst Presidents
Carter is on all of them, so is Nixon

I think Carter beats Obama by a mile. He may have been the worst before Obama came along... but at least Carter was a governor, and had some kind of record for actually running something... like a business. Obama has absolutely NO qualifications to be president. He is an attractive and articulate man, who happens to be black.... that's about ALL he has going for him... he gives a good speech!
 
Do you have the link to the whole SOU handy? Or should I go look it up and put this in context?

http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/196.html

So, let us, in these next 2 years--men and women of both parties, every political shade--concentrate on the long-range, bipartisan responsibilities of government, not the short-range or short-term temptations of partisan politics.

The problems we inherited were far worse than most inside and out of government had expected; the recession was deeper than most inside and out of government had predicted. Curing those problems has taken more time and a higher toll than any of us wanted. Unemployment is far too high. Projected Federal spending--if government refuses to tighten its own belt--will also be far too high and could weaken and shorten the economic recovery now underway.

This recovery will bring with it a revival of economic confidence and spending for consumer items and capital goods--the stimulus we need to restart our stalled economic engines. The American people have already stepped up their rate of saving, assuring that the funds needed to modernize our factories and improve our technology will once again flow to business and industry.

The inflationary expectations that led to a 21 1/2-percent interest prime rate and soaring mortgage rates 2 years ago are now reduced by almost half. Leaders have started to realize that double-digit inflation is no longer a way of life. I misspoke there. I should have said "lenders."

So, interest rates have tumbled, paving the way for recovery in vital industries like housing and autos.

The early evidence of that recovery has started coming in. Housing starts for the fourth quarter of 1982 were up 45 percent from a year ago, and housing permits, a sure indicator of future growth, were up a whopping 60 percent.

Read more: State of the Union Address: Ronald Reagan (January 25, 1983) — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/196.html#ixzz1UeI6h6wY


that is the speech, as you can see, he wasn't whining, he was stating a FACT and explaining to the american people what the government was doing, how the government didn't predict how bad it would be. it is clear onceler got that quip from a left wing site and didn't read context.....contrast that with how many times obama has blamed others. i also thought it was interesting how reagan used we as compared to obama's usage of "i"
 
From the 1983 SOU:

The problems we inherited were far worse than most inside and out of government had expected; the recession was deeper than most inside and out of government had predicted. Curing those problems has taken more time and a higher toll than any of us wanted. Unemployment is far too high. Projected Federal spending—if government refuses to tighten its own belt-will also be far too high and could weaken and shorten the economic recovery now underway.

The remainder of that particular paragraph has been reattached. Acknowledging the fact that the problems were worse than anticipated is fine. But if you offer no solutions and simply repeat that phrase over and over again it is a display of just how bad the 'leader of the free world' is leading. Let us take a look at the remainder of Reagan's address.... shall we.....

This recovery will bring with it a revival of economic confidence and spending for consumer items and capital goods—the stimulus we need to restart our stalled economic engines. The American people have already stepped up their rate of saving, assuring that the funds needed to modernize our factories and improve our technology will once again flow to business and industry.

The inflationary expectations that led to a 21 1/2-percent interest prime rate and soaring mortgage rates 2 years ago are now reduced by almost half. Leaders have started to realize that double-digit inflation is no longer a way of life. I misspoke there. I should have said "lenders."

So, interest rates have tumbled, paving the way for recovery in vital industries like housing and autos.

The early evidence of that recovery has started coming in. Housing starts for the fourth quarter of 1982 were up 45 percent from a year ago, and housing permits, a sure indicator of future growth, were up a whopping 60 percent.

We're witnessing an upsurge of productivity and impressive evidence that American industry will once again become competitive in markets at home and abroad, ensuring more jobs and better incomes for the Nation's work force. But our confidence must also be tempered by realism and patience. Quick fixes and artificial stimulants repeatedly applied over decades are what brought us the inflationary disorders that we've now paid such a heavy price to cure.

The permanent recovery in employment, production, and investment we seek won't come in a sharp, short spurt. It'll build carefully and steadily in the months and years ahead. In the meantime, the challenge of government is to identify the things that we can do now to ease the massive economic transition for the American people.

The federal budget is both a symptom and a cause of our economic problems. Unless we reduce the dangerous growth rate in government spending, we could face the prospect of sluggish economic growth into the indefinite future. Failure to cope with this problem now could mean as much as a trillion dollars more in national debt in the next four years alone. That would average $4,300 in additional debt for every man, woman, child, and baby in our nation.

To assure a sustained recovery, we must continue getting runaway spending under control to bring those deficits down. If we don't, the recovery will be too short, unemployment will remain too high, and we will leave an unconscionable burden of national debt for our children. That we must not do.

Let's be clear about where the deficit problem comes from. Contrary to the drumbeat we've been hearing for the last few months, the deficits we face are not rooted in defense spending. Taken as a percentage of the gross national product, our defense spending happens to be only about four-fifths of what it was in 1970. Nor is the deficit, as some would have it, rooted in tax cuts. Even with our tax cuts, taxes as a fraction of gross national product remain about the same as they were in 1970. The fact is, our deficits come from the uncontrolled growth of the budget for domestic spending.

During the 1970's, the share of our national income devoted to this domestic spending increased by more than 60 percent, from 10 cents out of every dollar produced by the American people to 16 cents. In spite of all our economies and efficiencies, and without adding any new programs, basic, necessary domestic spending provided for in this year's budget will grow to almost a trillion dollars over the next 5 years.

The deficit problem is a clear and present danger to the basic health of our Republic. We need a plan to overcome this danger—a plan based on these principles. It must be bipartisan. Conquering the deficits and putting the Government's house in order will require the best effort of all of us. It must be fair. Just as all will share in the benefits that will come from recovery, all would share fairly in the burden of transition. It must be prudent. The strength of our national defense must be restored so that we can pursue prosperity and peace and freedom while maintaining our commitment to the truly needy. And finally, it must be realistic. We can't rely on hope alone.

With these guiding principles in mind, let me outline a four-part plan to increase economic growth and reduce deficits.

First, in my budget message, I will recommend a Federal spending freeze. I know this is strong medicine, but so far, we have only cut the rate of increase in Federal spending. The Government has continued to spend more money each year, though not as much more as it did in the past. Taken as a whole, the budget I'm proposing for the fiscal year will increase no more than the rate of inflation. In other words, the Federal Government will hold the line on real spending. Now, that's far less than many American families have had to do in these difficult times.

I will request that the proposed 6-month freeze in cost-of-living adjustments recommended by the bipartisan Social Security Commission be applied to other government-related retirement programs. I will, also, propose a 1-year freeze on a broad range of domestic spending programs, and for Federal civilian and military pay and pension programs. And let me say right here, I'm sorry, with regard to the military, in asking that of them, because for so many years they have been so far behind and so low in reward for what the men and women in uniform are doing. But I'm sure they will understand that this must be across the board and fair.

Second, I will ask the Congress to adopt specific measures to control the growth of the so-called uncontrollable spending programs. These are the automatic spending programs, such as food stamps, that cannot be simply frozen and that have grown by over 400 percent since 1970. They are the largest single cause of the built-in or structural deficit problem. Our standard here will be fairness, ensuring that the taxpayers' hard-earned dollars go only to the truly needy; that none of them are turned away, but that fraud and waste are stamped out. And I'm sorry to say, there's a lot of it out there. In the food stamp program alone, last year, we identified almost [$]1.1 billion in overpayments. The taxpayers aren't the only victims of this kind of abuse. The truly needy suffer as funds intended for them are taken not by the needy, but by the greedy. For everyone's sake, we must put an end to such waste and corruption.

Third, I will adjust our program to restore America's defenses by proposing $55 billion in defense savings over the next 5 years. These are savings recommended to me by the Secretary of Defense, who has assured me they can be safely achieved and will not diminish our ability to negotiate arms reductions or endanger America's security. We will not gamble with our national survival.

And fourth, because we must ensure reduction and eventual elimination of deficits over the next several years, I will propose a standby tax, limited to no more than 1 percent of the gross national product, to start in fiscal 1986. It would last no more than 3 years, and it would start only if the Congress has first approved our spending freeze and budget control program. And there are several other conditions also that must be met, all of them in order for this program to be triggered.

Now, you could say that this is an insurance policy for the future, a remedy that will be at hand if needed but only resorted to if absolutely necessary. In the meantime, we'll continue to study ways to simplify the tax code and make it more fair for all Americans. This is a goal that every American who's ever struggled with a tax form can understand.

At the same time, however, I will oppose any efforts to undo the basic tax reforms that we've already enacted, including the 10-percent tax break coming to taxpayers this July and the tax indexing which will protect all Americans from inflationary bracket creep in the years ahead.

Now, I realize that this four-part plan is easier to describe than it will be to enact. But the looming deficits that hang over us and over America's future must be reduced. The path I've outlined is fair, balanced, and realistic. If enacted, it will ensure a steady decline in deficits, aiming toward a balanced budget by the end of the decade. It's the only path that will lead to a strong, sustained recovery. Let us follow that path together.

No domestic challenge is more crucial than providing stable, permanent jobs for all Americans who want to work. The recovery program will provide jobs for most, but others will need special help and training for new skills. Shortly, I will submit to the Congress the Employment Act of 1983, designed to get at the special problems of the long-term unemployed, as well as young people trying to enter the job market. I'll propose extending unemployment benefits, including special incentives to employers who hire the long-term unemployed, providing programs for displaced workers, and helping federally funded and State-administered unemployment insurance programs provide workers with training and relocation assistance. Finally, our proposal will include new incentives for summer youth employment to help young people get a start in the job market.

We must offer both short-term help and long-term hope for our unemployed. I hope we can work together on this. I hope we can work together as we did last year in enacting the landmark Job Training Partnership Act. Regulatory reform legislation, a responsible clean air act, and passage of enterprise zone legislation will also create new incentives for jobs and opportunity.

One of out of every five jobs in our country depends on trade. So, I will propose a broader strategy in the field of international trade—one that increases the openness of our trading system and is fairer to America's farmers and workers in the world marketplace. We must have adequate export financing to sell American products overseas. I will ask for new negotiating authority to remove barriers and to get more of our products into foreign markets. We must strengthen the organization of our trade agencies and make changes in our domestic laws and international trade policy to promote free trade and the increased flow of American goods, services, and investments.

Our trade position can also be improved by making our port system more efficient. Better, more active harbors translate into stable jobs in our coalfields, railroads, trucking industry, and ports. After 2 years of debate, it's time for us to get together and enact a port modernization bill.

Education, training, and retraining are fundamental to our success as are research and development and productivity. Labor, management, and government at all levels can and must participate in improving these tools of growth. Tax policy, regulatory practices, and government programs all need constant reevaluation in terms of our competitiveness. Every American has a role and a stake in international trade.

We Americans are still the technological leaders in most fields. We must keep that edge, and to do so we need to begin renewing the basics—starting with our educational system. While we grew complacent, others have acted. Japan, with a population only about half the size of ours, graduates from its universities more engineers than we do. If a child doesn't receive adequate math and science teaching by the age of 16, he or she has lost the chance to be a scientist or an engineer. We must join together-parents, teachers, grass roots groups, organized labor, and the business community-to revitalize American education by setting a standard of excellence.

In 1983 we seek four major education goals: a quality education initiative to encourage a substantial upgrading of math and science instruction through block grants to the States; establishment of education savings accounts that will give middle and lower-income families an incentive to save for their children's college education and, at the same time, encourage a real increase in savings for economic growth; passage of tuition tax credits for parents who want to send their children to private or religiously affiliated schools; a constitutional amendment to permit voluntary school prayer. God should never have been expelled from America's classrooms in the first place.

Our commitment to fairness means that we must assure legal and economic equity for women, and eliminate, once and for all, all traces of unjust discrimination against women from the United States Code. We will not tolerate wage discrimination based on sex, and we intend to strengthen enforcement of child support laws to ensure that single parents, most of whom are women, do not suffer unfair financial hardship. We will also take action to remedy inequities in pensions. These initiatives will be joined by others to continue our efforts to promote equity for women.

Also in the area of fairness and equity, we will ask for extension of the Civil Rights Commission, which is due to expire this year. The Commission is an important part of the ongoing struggle for justice in America, and we strongly support its reauthorization. Effective enforcement of our nation's fair housing laws is also essential to ensuring equal opportunity. In the year ahead, we'll work to strengthen enforcement of fair housing laws for all Americans.

The time has also come for major reform of our criminal justice statutes and acceleration of the drive against organized crime and drug trafficking. It's high time that we make our cities safe again. This administration hereby declares an all-out war on big-time organized crime and the drug racketeers who are poisoning our young people. We will also implement recommendations of our Task Force on Victims of Crime, which will report to me this week.

American agriculture, the envy of the world, has become the victim of its own successes. With one farmer now producing enough food to feed himself and 77 other people, America is confronted with record surplus crops and commodity prices below the cost of production. We must strive, through innovations like the payment-in-kind crop swap approach and an aggressive export policy, to restore health and vitality to rural America. Meanwhile, I have instructed the Department of Agriculture to work individually with farmers with debt problems to help them through these tough times.

Over the past year, our Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives has successfully forged a working partnership involving leaders of business, labor, education, and government to address the training needs of American workers. Thanks to the Task Force, private sector initiatives are now underway in all 50 States of the Union, and thousands of working people have been helped in making the shift from dead-end jobs and low-demand skills to the growth areas of high technology and the service economy. Additionally, a major effort will be focused on encouraging the expansion of private community child care. The new advisory council on private sector initiatives will carry on and extend this vital work of encouraging private initiative in 1983.

In the coming year, we will also act to improve the quality of life for Americans by curbing the skyrocketing cost of health care that is becoming an unbearable financial burden for so many. And we will submit legislation to provide catastrophic illness insurance coverage for older Americans.

I will also shortly submit a comprehensive federalism proposal that will continue our efforts to restore to States and local governments their roles as dynamic laboratories of change in a creative society.

During the next several weeks, I will send to the Congress a series of detailed proposals on these and other topics and look forward to working with you on the development of these initiatives.

So far, now, I've concentrated mainly on the problems posed by the future. But in almost every home and workplace in America, we're already witnessing reason for great hope—the first flowering of the manmade miracles of high technology, a field pioneered and still led by our country.

To many of us now, computers, silicon chips, data processing, cybernetics, and all the other innovations of the dawning high technology age are as mystifying as the workings of the combustion engine must have been when that first Model T rattled down Main Street, U.S.A. But as surely as America's pioneer spirit made us the industrial giant of the 20th century, the same pioneer spirit today is opening up on another vast front of opportunity, the frontier of high technology.

In conquering the frontier we cannot write off our traditional industries, but we must develop the skills and industries that will make us a pioneer of tomorrow. This administration is committed to keeping America the technological leader of the world now and into the 21st century.

But let us turn briefly to the international arena. America's leadership in the world came to us because of our own strength and because of the values which guide us as a society: free elections, a free press, freedom of religious choice, free trade unions, and above all, freedom for the individual and rejection of the arbitrary power of the state. These values are the bedrock of our strength. They unite us in a stewardship of peace and freedom with our allies and friends in NATO, in Asia, in Latin America, and elsewhere. They are also the values which in the recent past some among us had begun to doubt and view with a cynical eye.

Fortunately, we and our allies have rediscovered the strength of our common democratic values, and we're applying them as a cornerstone of a comprehensive strategy for peace with freedom. In London last year, I announced the commitment of the United States to developing the infrastructure of democracy throughout the world. We intend to pursue this democratic initiative vigorously. The future belongs not to governments and ideologies which oppress their peoples, but to democratic systems of self-government which encourage individual initiative and guarantee personal freedom.

But our strategy for peace with freedom must also be based on strength—economic strength and military strength. A strong American economy is essential to the well-being and security of our friends and allies. The restoration of a strong, healthy American economy has been and remains one of the central pillars of our foreign policy. The progress I've been able to report to you tonight will, I know, be as warmly welcomed by the rest of the world as it is by the American people.

We must also recognize that our own economic well-being is inextricably linked to the world economy. We export over 20 percent of our industrial production, and 40 percent of our farmland produces for export. We will continue to work closely with the industrialized democracies of Europe and Japan and with the International Monetary Fund to ensure it has adequate resources to help bring the world economy back to strong, noninflationary growth.

.... taking out paragraphs on foreign policy, soviets and arms race due to site limitations to size of post

A very wise man, Bernard Baruch, once said that America has never forgotten the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path. Our country is a special place, because we Americans have always been sustained, through good times and bad, by a noble vision—a vision not only of what the world around us is today but what we as a free people can make it be tomorrow.

We're realists; we solve our problems instead of ignoring them, no matter how loud the chorus of despair around us. But we're also idealists, for it was an ideal that brought our ancestors to these shores from every corner of the world.

Right now we need both realism and idealism. Millions of our neighbors are without work. It is up to us to see they aren't without hope. This is a task for all of us. And may I say, Americans have rallied to this cause, proving once again that we are the most generous people on Earth.

We who are in government must take the lead in restoring the economy. [Applause] And here all that time, I thought you were reading the paper. [Laughter]

The single thing—the single thing that can start the wheels of industry turning again is further reduction of interest rates. Just another 1 or 2 points can mean tens of thousands of jobs.

Right now, with inflation as low as it is, 3.9 percent, there is room for interest rates to come down. Only fear prevents their reduction. A lender, as we know, must charge an interest rate that recovers the depreciated value of the dollars loaned. And that depreciation is, of course, the amount of inflation. Today, interest rates are based on fear—fear that government will resort to measures, as it has in the past, that will send inflation zooming again.

We who serve here in this Capital must erase that fear by making it absolutely clear that we will not stop fighting inflation; that, together, we will do only those things that will lead to lasting economic growth.

Yes, the problems confronting us are large and forbidding. And, certainly, no one can or should minimize the plight of millions of our friends and neighbors who are living in the bleak emptiness of unemployment. But we must and can give them good reason to be hopeful.

Back over the years, citizens like ourselves have gathered within these walls when our nation was threatened; sometimes when its very existence was at stake. Always with courage and common sense, they met the crises of their time and lived to see a stronger, better, and more prosperous country. The present situation is no worse and, in fact, is not as bad as some of those they faced. Time and again, they proved that there is nothing we Americans cannot achieve as free men and women.

Yes, we still have problems—plenty of them. But it's just plain wrong—unjust to our country and unjust to our people—to let those problems stand in the way of the most important truth of all: America is on the mend.

We owe it to the unfortunate to be aware of their plight and to help them in every way we can. No one can quarrel with that. We must and do have compassion for all the victims of this economic crisis. But the big story about America today is the way that millions of confident, caring people-those extraordinary "ordinary" Americans who never make the headlines and will never be interviewed—are laying the foundation, not just for recovery from our present problems but for a better tomorrow for all our people.

From coast to coast, on the job and in classrooms and laboratories, at new construction sites and in churches and community groups, neighbors are helping neighbors. And they've already begun the building, the research, the work, and the giving that will make our country great again.

I believe this, because I believe in them-in the strength of their hearts and minds, in the commitment that each one of them brings to their daily lives, be they high or humble. The challenge for us in government is to be worthy of them—to make government a help, not a hindrance to our people in the challenging but promising days ahead.

If we do that, if we care what our children and our children's children will say of us, if we want them one day to be thankful for what we did here in these temples of freedom, we will work together to make America better for our having been here-not just in this year or this decade but in the next century and beyond.

Thank you, and God bless you.

Tell me... does that sound like Obama to you?
 
Here is an interesting 'Rethinking Carter' article from 2000 from a Libertarian economic perspective.


Rethinking Carter

As the political season stumbles to a close, we need to remember that the historical relationship between economic policy, economic performance, and political rhetoric can be wildly unpredictable. For example, all these years later, it is worth reconsidering the presidency of Jimmy Carter, from 1977 to 1981. Many of the reforms that took place under his watch are responsible for at least some of the current prosperity.

Now, sitting in gasoline lines in 1973 and 1979 was no fun, and inflation, unemployment and general economic uncertainty seemed to rule during much of that period. We especially remember that during Carter's presidency a number of these awful things occurred simultaneously. In fact, these economic calamities plus the humiliating Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979 and 1980 certainly contributed to his 1980 electoral defeat by Ronald Reagan and to the general conclusion that Carter's term as President of the United States was marked by failure.

In one sense, this is true. I was truly ecstatic in voting against Carter in 1980 and cheered his exit from the Oval Office. In retrospect, however, I believe that my judgment of the man was too harsh. Carter does not receive the due that should be coming to him regarding his economic record, and in many ways he is the real architect of our current prosperity, not the present set of clowns in the White House. That he does not receive more credit, I believe, is mostly due to the fact that Carter is nearly clueless about his own accomplishments and has never sought to promote them. In other words, we had a chief executive who could not tell the good from the bad about his administration.

While we marvel about this "New Economy" (which really isn't very new, nor is it indestructible, as some may think), we forget some of the reasons why opportunities abound that did not exist a decade ago. Some fundamental changes were made by Congress and the President of the United States two decades ago. The era of deregulation - while hardly complete, especially from an Austrian point of view - has enabled us to vastly expand our economic boundaries.

Republicans like to point to the failures of the Carter Administration and then claim that Ronald Reagan brought us into the present era. Alas, while I prefer Reagan to Carter, I cannot say that the above statement is true. Granted, much occurred during the Reagan Administration that was good, but if truth be known, many of the important initiatives that enabled those boundaries to expand came from Carter's presidency.

To understand the magnitude of change we have witnessed in the last 20 years or so, remember that in 1980 the Interstate Commerce Commission regulated both trucking and the railroads. "Ma Bell" had a nationwide monopoly in which long distance calls came through copper wires, each strand with the capacity of carrying 15 calls. (A single fiber optic line in use today can carry 2 million calls.)

Airlines had been "deregulated" for only two years. Government controlled the pricing and allocation of oil in the United States. "Regulation Q" and other restrictions on banks and financial institutions kept capital formation in the doldrums. Another way of putting it was that many sectors of this economy were more socialistic then than they are now.

Carter's administration played a large part in many of the deregulation efforts. Unfortunately, he usually only got it half right, which reflected his core statist philosophy.

Take oil deregulation, for example. By 1980, the oil situation in this country was critical. On the left, Carter's Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy was advocating outright nationalization of the oil industry. On the other side, Republican Ronald Reagan was calling for complete decontrol. Carter took the "middle road."

First, he announced gradual decontrol of oil prices and the phasing out of the Keystone-Cops like government allocation system. However, Carter also pushed a "Windfall Profits Tax" on the belief that decontrol would bring higher prices and, thus, higher profits to oil companies that "really don't deserve them." The Wall Street Journal so opposed Carter's oil tax that it published an editorial, "Death of Reason," on the day Congress passed the tax, bordering the editorial in black.

Full decontrol was scheduled to take place in the spring of 1981, but Reagan upon taking office lifted controls almost immediately, thus receiving credit for what was mostly the action of his predecessor. While Carter was mistaken in his belief that decontrol would automatically increase oil profits (many investors also made the same error), one must also recognize the political heat he took for his actions, especially from the left. Ralph Nader, who had endorsed Carter as a "breath of fresh air" just four years earlier, denounced oil decontrol as "the greatest anti-consumer action of this century" and predicted $600 a barrel oil by 1990.

Because deregulation ultimately had the opposite effect that its detractors had predicted (both oil prices and profits fell during the first half of the 1980s), public anger directed against oil companies subsided and within a short time, Congress was able to quietly repeal the so-called Windfall Profits Tax.

After deregulating airlines, the Carter Administration looked then to doing the same for trucking and railroads. In fact, Reagan received the endorsement from the Teamster's Union in exchange for his promise that he would delay deregulation of trucking. While the ICC was ultimately dismantled during the Reagan years, it is safe to say that the one who sealed its doom was Jimmy Carter.

It was the Carter Administration that also pushed the antitrust suit against AT&T, a move that ultimately led to the breakup of the telecommunications giant and the advent of new technologies and cheap long distance. This is NOT an endorsement of that suit. A better way to bring competition into the industry would have been to have deprived AT&T of its legal monopoly status. (Better yet, the monopoly privileges should never have been granted in the first place.)

However, that being said, one can see how Carter's actions have benefitted our present economy. Were we still living under the old transportation, oil, and telecommunications regimes, we would not have the greatly expanded economy that we enjoy today. By helping to open the telecommunications field to new firms and new technologies, the Carter Administration at least indirectly helped bring about the application of fiber optics. The old transportation regimes would not have allowed for the retail discounting that is so common today.

I would even go as far as to say that if the old regulatory regimes were still in place, our economy could not have absorbed the monetary growth that the Fed has recently encouraged. No doubt, prices would be rising as fast or faster today than they did in 1980, when the Consumer Price Index shot up by more than 13 percent.

Granted, the Carter Administration also gave us incredible economic stupidity. Carter continued to blame the oil companies for the oil crises of the 1970s, and it was his administration that gave us the abominable antitrust action against the cereal companies. (The Federal Trade Commission charged them with having a "shared monopoly" and said that "brand proliferation" of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals was done in violation of the law.) Nor did Carter have the sense and courage to drop the awful antitrust action against IBM. It took the Reagan Administration to drop the IBM and cereal cases, and to ease government actions against mergers.

The Carter Administration also gave greater power to the Federal Reserve System through the Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA) of 1980 which otherwise was a necessary first step in ending the harmful New Deal restrictions placed upon financial institutions. In fact, it would be safe to say that Reagan probably would have taken the necessary deregulatory steps had Carter kept all of the regulatory regimes in place.

However, Carter actually made it easier for Reagan to take the actions he did. If the Democrats wish to lionize one of their own as the "creator" of the "New Economy," they should be looking to Jimmy Carter, not Bill Clinton.

http://mises.org/daily/535
 
And for his next trick, Dixie will spin how a market around 12K is worse than a market at around 7K, and how losing 400,000 jobs a month is better than gaining 100,000 jobs a month.

All we have to do is go snatch any drunk of a barstool and ask him if we are better off than we were 3 years ago! You can SPIN all you like, pinhead... the people ain't buying it. The market is in free-fall again today, unemployment is still hovering over 9%, with REAL unemployment in double-digits, and you'd be hard pressed to show us the month we gained 100k jobs in the private sector... which isn't even enough to account for the new people moving into the work force. Businesses are not expanding or hiring, and our credit rating has been downgraded.... yet, in your pinhead world, everything is lovely, and certainly better than it was before! How fucking insane retarded does someone have to be before we can have them locked away? I think you may be getting close to that point, OneCell.
 
Must defend Reagan....must defend Reagan....

I'll tell ya, the hypocrisy from you guys is astronomical; it breaks down previous boundaries. I haven't seen its like on the board...
 
All we have to do is go snatch any drunk of a barstool and ask him if we are better off than we were 3 years ago! You can SPIN all you like, pinhead... the people ain't buying it. The market is in free-fall again today, unemployment is still hovering over 9%, with REAL unemployment in double-digits, and you'd be hard pressed to show us the month we gained 100k jobs in the private sector... which isn't even enough to account for the new people moving into the work force. Businesses are not expanding or hiring, and our credit rating has been downgraded.... yet, in your pinhead world, everything is lovely, and certainly better than it was before! How fucking insane retarded does someone have to be before we can have them locked away? I think you may be getting close to that point, OneCell.

Well, you tried. For the record, I'd rather have my market at around 12K than at 7K (I heard that investments do better at higher levels), and I'd rather have businesses hiring rather than firing.

But hey - that's just me....
 
Most of the lists I have seen list Jimmy Carter at around 14th worst. There were some really bad Presidents, like Grant who presided over some of the worst corruption the government has seen. Carter was bad, but he wasn't nearly as bad as some others.
Like I said. Below average. Those who keep repeating the myths about Carter have a political agenda of distracting what a lousy President Nixon was and what a royal mess he made of things.
 
Here's GDP sicne Obama took office:

fredgraph.png


Here's GDP during the same period of Regain's first term:

fredgraph.png
 
Well, you tried. For the record, I'd rather have my market at around 12K than at 7K (I heard that investments do better at higher levels), and I'd rather have businesses hiring rather than firing.

But hey - that's just me....

Market under 11k... and falling...
 
Like I said. Below average. Those who keep repeating the myths about Carter have a political agenda of distracting what a lousy President Nixon was and what a royal mess he made of things.

STILL ignoring the FACT that everyone one of your comments about the economic conditions was WRONG?
 
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