From Pine View Farm

Bushonomics 0

Truth.

Will Bunch (emphasis added):

. . . The real problem is that the legacy of Ronald Reagan — of deregulating the world of risky finance and leaving a giant mess for all of us to clean up — is betraying the American people, again.

In a way, Reagan was the grandfather of the financial bailout in America. Because it was Reagan who pushed to deregulate the savings-and-loan industry, back when credit default swaps were still a gleam in the eye of the Lehman Brothers.

”All in all, I think we hit the jackpot,” Reagan said on Oct. 15, 1982, when he signed into law a bill that lifted many restrictions on the savings-and-loan industry, giving thrifts the power to make larger real-estate loans and compete with money market funds. Some jackpot. It turned out that the deregulation of the S&L’s unleashed a corrupt rush into risky and often corrupt real-estate dealings, often involving insiders, and the nation’s thrift industry teetered on the edge of collapse just months after the Gipper left the Oval Office in January 1989. Within months, Reagan’s hand-picked GOP successor, George H.W. Bush, was forced to push through a bailout package with a value of $160 billion – which would be a lot of money now but was a huge amount of money 19 years ago. This is what Craig Shirley calls “Reagan’s legacy of small government and deregulation.”

(Gee, sort of sounds familiar, doesn’t it.)

No reconciliation.

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