Quote Originally Posted by Lyle View Post
Well acting like a pussy during the Oil embargo hurt him big time he didn't fix the problem he tried to make America more like the USSR where the government allows you to have the temperature in YOUR OWN HOUSE only so hot or so cold and when the government is trying to tell anyone what they can or can't do in their own house it's over stepping the bounds. Intrest rates were also very high, the prime rate was 21.5%.....that's the highest it's ever been.....EVER.

Fact is all economies run on oil and therefore not gaining any access to oil hurt the economy of America. You don't have oil = you don't sell anything, you don't sell anything = people don't have jobs = the government doesn't collect as much when the tax man comes a knocking.


But awwww he had good intentions....so I guess we'll give him a break
As I expected, bugger all substantive from you in reply. The oil embargo was something out of Carter's control. Exactly what could any president have done to force the Arabs to put their oil back on the market?


Carter had the guts to put interest rates up to kill inflation, even though he knew it would mean no chance of winning a second term in office. He doomed his own political career to do the right thing for America.

Here's a comparison for you Lyle. Carter came to power and inherited double digit inflation which Nixon had created and done nothing about and Ford had continued to do nothing about. The only way to get inflation down was to appoint a Fed chief that was an inflation hawk but this would mean the Fed raising interest rates to levels as high as 20% to get the economy back on track. Carter bit the bullet and did what Nixon and Ford didn't have the balls to do.


Bush 43 came to power with record low inflation, low interest rates and the first Federal budget surplus since before the Depression. The country was in a shallow recession* that ended even before he enacted his tax cuts, but the overall fiscal health of the country was outstanding. He then proceeded to blow the fiscal situation up with huge unfunded tax cuts and when they failed to produce economic growth slashed interest rates to unsafe levels and printed historic quantities of dollars to fund the deficits caused by the tax cuts. When the housing bubble he'd created started to deflate he was left with the same choice Carter had -- raise rates and stop printing money to get the economy/fiscal situation on track and stop inflation/the oil price soaring, or continue his policies, knowing he'd need to print epic quantities of dollars to prevent the economy from catastrophe but making the long-term situation much worse. Bush chose the coward's way out, picking a Fed topper who was nicknamed Helicopter/Backstop Ben for his stated willingness to run the printing presses at full speed to deal with any economic problems.

One of these guys inherited a disastrous situation and dealt with it. The other one inherited the best economic situation of any president in living memory and created a total disaster, something you'll discover when your shrinking paycheck buys less and less over the next few years. From a position of surplus the deficits are now so big that the US is currently borrowing $1 trillion a year from foreigners to maintain its current standard of living. The total worth of the US is roughly $50 trillion, so you're effectively giving away a State a year to foreigners which you'll have to pay back in future at whatever rates of interest they're demanding to hold assets in depreciating dollars.


* Recessions are actually necessary every few years to cleanse overinvestment/capacity from the economy and allow markets to form more realistic prices for goods and services. Clinton could easily have avoided the recession at the end of his time in office by running the printing presses and flooding the financial system with money, something Bush has done almost nonstop since he took office, but Clinton had the balls to maintain fiscal discipline and abide by the rules he'd set for monetary policy.