Reagan - Talk about luck. Debt levels had fallen from 100% of GDP after WWII to 25%. Fed chairman Paul Volcker had already started to rein in inflation with has high interest rate policy. Carter had begun the deregulation wave. The Soviet Union was falling apart. If anything, Reagan squandered much of this bounty and set the nation on a course of debt (he was the first president to see the national debt go over $1 trillion). Overrated.
Clinton - Another lucky president. He inherited the peace dividend as Soviet socialism unraveled. That was largely squandered. The Greenspan Fed would later blow a dot-com bubble on his watch. This fattened the government's coffers with capital gains tax receipts, leading to a surplus. The economic numbers were an illusion, not nearly as good as they appear.
Bush II - Inherited a bursting tech bubble. Made things worse with his aggressive military response to 9/11. Then he allowed the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed to blow another bubble, this time in housing and credit. Bush II was a typical big government RINO who admired the big government FDR. He wanted to be a war president: mission accomplished.
Obama - Good timing, coming in AFTER the Bush II housing bubble burst. He reacted with big government "stimulus" and an aggressive Fed, blowing the current everything bubble.
Trump - Inherited the everything bubble, allowed the Yellen/Powell Fed to blow it even bigger. The Bush II/Obama bailouts/stimulus paled next the those in 2020 to fight state government lockdowns in the face of a bad case of the flu. Trump was a big spender, but pretty good on regulations.
Biden - Inherits the mother of all messes. Debt/GDP is over 100%. Boomers are now tapping into entitlements. For 40 years, politicians kicked the can down the road on debt, deficits and social security. Now the bills are coming due and they're landing right in Biden's lap. Of course he was in DC nearly all of those 40 years. All he can do is prove, again, the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Biden could very well go down as Hoover II.
~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, November 8, 2020
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