Posted on 08/20/2011 4:29:14 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Remember "TARP," "Too Big to Fail," "Government Motors," "pay czar," the buzzwords of the Bush-Obama era? They reflected a disturbing trend toward presidential interference in economic life.
Forty years ago this week, President Richard Nixon showed us just how dangerous unchecked executive power can be to the free-enterprise system.
On Aug. 15, 1971, in a nationally televised address, Nixon announced, "I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States."
After a 90-day freeze, increases would have to be approved by a "Pay Board" and a "Price Commission," with an eye toward eventually lifting controls -- conveniently, after the 1972 election.
Putting the U.S. economy "into a permanent straitjacket would ... stifle the expansion of our free enterprise system," Nixon said. As President George W. Bush put it in 2008, sometimes you have to "abandon free-market principles to save the free-market system."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Regards
Actually, that assessment is pretty close to the mark. Nixon closing the gold window was a major milestone on the path to the present monetary cluster****.
Hi DB, that chart represents ALL debt (from consumer to fed.gov), not just government debt. It is all the scarier when you realize that yes, government debt has been skyrocketing in a futile effort to stem the monetary effects of the popping of the housing bubble.
The sort that think it's just too cool to run candidates like a cop turned hooker, a Druid, a guy with blue skin, Howard Stern...
The anarchocapitalist sorts who would agree with Rothbard that the fall of Saigon was the death of a state.
Am I reading the chart wrong or does it not show that GDP was in fact flat clear back to 1953 without debt, and actually grew as debt mounted starting around 1971?
I don’t know who is more full of BS, you or that clown chart.
The numbers are too small before that point to deviate on the scale used. The scale is not in percentages but in absolute # of dollars.
Forget Watergate, he should have been impeached for the Wage and Price controls.
The source data is specified on the chart.
Do the math yourself if you are competent to (if not, your 3rd-grader should be able to help).
Lol. Yeah, I went over it again and gleaned some of its implications. It’s just about the worst statistical obfuscation I’ve ever seen. It’s a very obtuse way of depicting the abysmal GDP response to federal debt spending.
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