Quote Originally Posted by Lyle View Post
Well if you think that it only confirms the fact that your views on American politics come from a EUROPEAN standpoint.


Unemployment and inflation....both waaaaaaay up in the Carter years and as President he was correctly held accountable for that and he was destroyed by Reagan. And Carter made America lose face again and again
The inflation was caused by a GOP president printing money to pay for a foreign war and increased government spending, plus the increase in the oil price caused by printing all those dollars/oil shocks that no president could control. Sound familiar? Exactly the same thing is happening now and if the next president doesn't have the balls of Jimmy Carter and do what he did to kill inflation you'll be paying for $10 gas from your ever-shrinking paycheck in a few years.

Year Inflation Unemployment (1)
-------------------------------
1961 1.0% 6.7%
1962 1.0 5.6
1963 1.3 5.6
1964 1.3 5.2
1965 1.6 4.5 < Vietnam war spending increases
1966 2.9 3.8
1967 3.1 3.8
1968 4.2 3.5
1969 5.5 3.5
1970 5.7 5.0
1971 4.4 6.0
1972 3.2 5.6
1973 6.2 4.9
1974 11.0 5.6 < First oil crisis
1975 9.1 8.5
1976 5.8 7.7
1977 6.5 7.1
1978 7.6 6.1
1979 11.3 5.9 < Second oil crisis
1980 13.5 7.2
1981 10.3 7.6
1982 6.2 9.7
1983 3.2 9.6
1984 4.3 7.5

You can see here that unemployment actually fell during the Carter years.


And If Carter hadn't raised interest rates inflation would have kept on soaring
under Reagan.

Carter dealt as well as he could with the situation he was dealt and was the only president
out of the Nixon, Ford, Carter era with the balls to tackle inflation.