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America’s Brobdingnagian $1.3 trillion national security budget thrives on manufactured threats and falsely demonized foes. or crying out loud. Since the Munich Security Conference in 2007, the man (Putin) has said over and over, and then over again, that Ukraine’s ascension to NATO is an absolute red line. And anyone with their head screwed on right would have no trouble accepting that declaration by answering one simple question. To wit, how would Washington react if Russia put missiles and nukes in Mexico, or Cuba, or Nicaragua, or Granada or Venezuela or even Tierra Del Fuego? The bloated now 31-nation NATO...

David Stockman, who headed the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, in a new commentary warns: Ultimately, the hammer of fiscal crisis and a crashing stock market will break any remaining loyalty of the GOP elders as they smell the 2018 elections turning into a replay of the rout of 1974. And then the Donald will be gone, and well before August 2018, too. I told an audience in Vancouver last Friday that it could happen by February. The bottom line is that the Swamp is so undrainable that it will end up making mincemeat of Donald Trump.......

During the 29 years after Alan Greenspan became Fed chairman in August 1987, the balance sheet of the Fed exploded from $200 billion to $4.5 trillion. Call that a 23X gain. That’s a pretty massive increase—so let’s see what else happened over that three-decade span. Well, according to Forbes, Warren Buffett’s net worth was $2.1 billion back in 1987 and it is now about $73 billion. Call that 35X. *** Further down the Greenspan era rabbit hole, we have the average weekly wage of full-time workers in inflation adjusted dollars. In constant 1982 dollars that was $330 per week in...

Trumped! Why It Happened And What Comes Next, Part 1   Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blogFirst there were seventeen. At length, there was one.Donald Trump’s wildly improbable capture of the GOP nomination, therefore, is the most significant upheaval in American politics since Ronald Reagan. And the proximate cause is essentially the same. Like back then, an era of drastic bipartisan mis-governance has finally generated an electoral impulse to sweep out the stables.Accordingly, the Donald’s patented phrase that “we aren’t winning anymore” is striking a deep nerve on main street. But that is not on account of giant trade deficits or a faltering foreign policy and failed military adventures per se.Indeed, it...

If you want to hear David Stockman's critique of the US economy here is your chance

The official U.S. unemployment rate is 5.1% -- the lowest in seven years -- but Donald Trump calls that a "joke." On Monday, he claimed he'd seen numbers that show America's real unemployment rate is as high as 42%. How does he arrive at such a wild figure? Trump appears to be looking at the number of American adults not working. Period. Out of about 251 million American adults, roughly 102 million -- or 40.6% -- aren't working. But, of course, there are a lot of reasons people don't work. They could be disabled, in college, at home raising kids...

To wit, artificial suppression of free market interest rates by the central bank is designed to cause households to borrow more money than they otherwise would in order to spend more than they earn, pure and simple. Its nothing more than a modernized version of the original, crude Keynesian pump-priming theory—–except it dispenses with the inconvenience of getting politicians to approve spending increases and tax cuts in favor of the writ of a small posse of unelected monetary mandarins who run the FOMC and peg money market interest rates at will. But the whole enterprise is a crock. The consumer...

Kafka & Keynes Mania in financial markets has raged so far out of control as to place them outside the realm of rationality, says former White House budget director David Stockman. “There are no markets left in any meaningful sense of the word, just a raging casino infected with the madness of the crowds and the central bank pied pipers who mesmerize them,” he writes on his blog. That madness is illustrated in the months-long rise of Chinese stocks and the rebound of McDonald’s shares last week, Stockman says. As for China, the Shanghai Composite Index has soared 121...

American businesses are borrowing at historic high levels, but the only thing growing as a result is how fast their equity capital is vanishing, according to David Stockman, White House budget chief during the Reagan administration. Stockman blamed the Fed and the Fed's Wall Street cheerleaders. He said the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned by nine times since 2000, yet real net investment in the business sector has cratered by 33 percent during the same time period. “Once upon a time businesses borrowed long term money — if they borrowed at all — in order to fund plant, equipment and...

"If and when Congress votes on a new immigration bill -- whatever the "triggers," timetables or other provisos -- the real issue to be decided will be the same as it has been from the beginning. That issue is whether the Republican Party, dazed from a daily pounding by the Washington press corps, will agree to commit political suicide by enfranchising 11 plus million illegal aliens on U.S. soil, the vast majority of whom will soon be casting Democratic ballots." So wrote the great M. Stanton Evans, who passed away on Tuesday. Having been at the forefront of the movement...

It might be hard to imagine President Ronald Reagan agreeing with President Barack Obama's take on wealth inequality. But Reagan's first director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, says that the disparity in household wealth is a major problem that ought to be addressed. He just has very different ideas about how to deal with it. (snip) But Stockman says blame lays not with the tax code (indeed, he pioneered a trickle-down approach to taxes under Reagan) but with the Fed. Obama "is talking about a symptom, but he's clueless as to the cause. The cause is...

House Republicans "capitulated" in agreeing to the two-year budget deal reached last night and left the country to deal with an unsustainable fiscal situation until the peak of the presidential primaries in 2015, when nothing will get done, former federal budget director David Stockman told CNBC on Wednesday. "First, let's be clear—it's a joke and betrayal," Stockman, who served under President Ronald Reagan, said on "Squawk on the Street." "It's the final surrender of the House Republican leadership to Beltway politics and kicking the can and ignoring the budget monster that's hurtling down the road." Stockman added that the budget...

David Stockman is at it again. The Reagan-era budget director caused an uproar in 1981 by publicly decrying the moves of his boss to spur the economy with tax cuts. Now a private investor and author, he’s pushing for a huge new tax on big earners. Stockman would subject the nation’s top 10% of households to a levy equal to 30% of their wealth, payable over a decade. Without it, he maintains, the U.S. will wind up in a horrific, Greece-style debt wreck. Stockman, 66 years old, recently talked up his plan at an ­unlikely forum: New York City Junto,...

David Stockman, author of The Great Deformation, summarizes the last quarter century thus: What has been growing is the wealth of the rich, the remit of the state, the girth of Wall Street, the debt burden of the people, the prosperity of the beltway and the sway of the three great branches of government - that is, the warfare state, the welfare state and the central bank... What is flailing is the vast expanse of the Main Street economy where the great majority have experienced stagnant living standards, rising job insecurity, failure to accumulate material savings, rapidly approach old age...

This week, while economists should have been closely considering the implications of the actual bankruptcy of Stockton, California, they instead heaped scorn on the perceived ideological bankruptcy of David Stockman. In other words, Stockman trumped Stockton. Ronald Reagan's former Budget Director contributed "Sundown in America" a multi-page opinion piece to the Sunday New York Times which loudly and eloquently described the illusions of our current economic system. While I don't agree with everything Stockman believes, I think he is showing great wisdom and courage in making dire predictions and calling for extreme changes in our policy and politics. What was...

Last week, the Dow (DJI) and S&P 500 (^GSPC) both beat their all-time closing highs set back in 2007. In a Sunday New York Times op-ed, David Stockman, President Reagan’s budget director and former Republican Congressman, writes “instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.”

David Stockman Writes Huge Unhinged Screed About How America Is Doomed And How You Should Get Out Of The Market NOW Joe WeisenthalMarch 31, 2013, 1:05 PMFormer Reagan budget director David Stockman has a new book coming out on Tuesday, and he's warming up the public with a massive piece in today's New York Times titled Sundown in America, which basically says the future of America bleak because of massive government debts, crony capitalism, bailouts, megabanks, the removal of the gold standard, and even green energy. The piece can truly be characterized as Hard Money Buzzword Bingo, as Stockman tries...

There are few things the liberal media like more than a Republican renegade. David Stockman has made a career out of strutting his independence from the GOP. So little surprise that he was an honored guest on this morning's Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC. That Stockman repaid his hosts by attacking Republicans was utterly predictable. Even so, the absurdity of Stockman's particular assertion was breathtaking. The former Reagan budget director actually claimed that the notion of American exceptionalism, a focus of Newt Gingrich's campaign, is nothing less than . . . "neo-con code" for an aggressive foreign policy. View...

Last week David Stockman was on Tom Keene, making the usual media rounds (sometimes we marvel at his patience and endurance), as one of the few voices of fiscal prudence available to TV producers who seek to hold a balanced debate on the topic of US insolvency. Today, Reagan's budget director was again on Bloomberg TV explaining the reality of the situation to Matt Miller for the nth time (by now even a 2 year old will understand the cul-de-sac facing the US), although presenting a new spin on the situation, namely that we have gotten to a point where...

David Stockman: Both US Parties Are Now Advocating DEFAULT Joe Weisenthal May 23, 2011, 3:39 PMDavid Stocksman, the former Reagan advisor-turned-deficit hawk sees "no hope" of the two parties coming to an agreement on the US debt, because neither party is willing to compromise on either spending or taxes (depending onw which party you're talking about). The only hope is a fiscal wakeup call in the form of major bond market selloff, he just told Bloomberg TV He sees that happening after QE2 ends, when the Fed gets out of the market. The key thing, which ke thinks people need...