Ronald Reagan on balancing the budget

Ronald Reagan: When budget deficits are what's causing inflation, I don't see that there's any room to be on either side of that argument.  I think the answer to curing inflation is a balanced budget.  

Johnny Carson: Now how do you do that?  How do you balance the budget?  You don't spend more than you take in...

Reagan: Balancing the budget is like protecting your virtue.  You have to learn to say "no."

Carson: There's gotta be another way.  What's the second option?

~ Ronald Reagan, interview with Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show

Scott Bessent compares Donald Trump to Ronald Reagan

Both immediately went for tax cuts.  They both focused on the biggest external threat.  Reagan spent the Soviet Union into oblivion.  I think Trump had a different idea for how to deal with China and make up for a lot of bad historical trade agreements...  Even "Make America Great Again" was a Reaganesque saying.  It's an optimistic vision of America instead of managed decline which I think Biden 2.0 would be.

~ Scott Bessent, "The Fallacy of Bidenomics: A Return to Central Planning," Manhattan Institute, 22:10 mark, June 13, 2024

Brahma Chellaney on how Israel's policy of backing Hamas was influenced by U.S. support for mujahideen in Afghanistan

The international focus on the war in Gaza has helped obscure the fact that Israel in the 1980s aided the rise of the Islamist Hamas as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah.  Israel’s policy was clearly influenced by the U.S. training and arming of mujahideen (or Islamic holy warriors) in Pakistan from multiple countries to wage jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. 

The multibillion-dollar American program from 1980 to create anti-Soviet jihadis represented what still remains the largest covert operation in the Central Intelligence Agency’s history.  In 1985, at a White House ceremony attended by several mujahideen, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan gestured toward his guests and declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.”

Out of the mujahideen evolved the Taliban and al-Qaida.  As then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly admitted in 2010, “We trained them, we equipped them, we funded them, including somebody named Osama bin Laden ... And it didn’t work out so well for us.”

~ Brahma Chellaney, "Israel's Historical Role in the Rise of Hamas," The Japan Times, November 21, 2023

President Reagan meeting with Afghan mujahideen
leaders in the Oval Office in 1983

Time magazine on the Sabra and Satila massacre of June 1982

After the Phalangists had left the camps, Red Cross personnel, many journalists and other persons entered, and it then became apparent that in the camps, and particularly in Shatila, civilians, including women and children, had been massacred.  It was clear from the spectacle that presented itself that a considerable number of the killed had not been cut down in combat but had been murdered, and that no few acts of barbarism had also been perpetrated. 

In this kind of careful, deliberate prose, Israel's official commission of inquiry described the dreadful events of the three days last September when Israelis allowed Lebanese Phalangist soldiers to enter the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, where the Christian militiamen proceeded to murder between 700 and 800 Arabs.  After four months of testimony and deliberation, the Israeli commission last week delivered its report on the Beirut massacre, and it proved to be a stinging indictment of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and several military officials, concluding that they shared an "indirect" responsibility for what happened in the Beirut camps.  The report assigned only a "certain degree" of blame to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but it recommended that Sharon either resign or be dismissed.  It was also highly critical of three top commanders and a military intelligence official who were involved in the Israeli occupation of West Beirut. 

The report, described by the Jerusalem Post as a "political earthquake," set off shock waves throughout Israel and indeed throughout the world.  It was hailed in the U.S. and Western Europe as a remarkable example of self-criticism by a democratic society.  Said the New York Times: "How rare the nation that seeks salvation by revealing such shame."  In France, Interior Minister Gaston Defferre remarked, "This report is the honor of Israel.  It gives the world a new lesson in democracy."  The Italian Communist paper L'Unita called the report "a turning point for Israel," while Italian Journalist Arrigo Levi wrote in La Stampa of Turin: "It would be difficult to find any other nation at war that would let itself be subject to such an open and hard self-criticism." 

The U.S. cautiously avoided any public comment on the report. Said President Reagan: "I just don't think we should be commenting or injecting ourselves into that internal problem."  Nonetheless, some Administration officials privately expressed hopes that the commission's findings could, by reducing Sharon's influence, lead to a lessening of the increasingly pernicious tension that has recently permeated U.S.-Israeli relations.

~ William E. Smith, "The Verdict Is Guilty: An Israeli commission and the Beirut massacre," Time, February 21, 1983

Ronald Reagan on inflation

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

~ Ronald Reagan, 1978

Kevin Duffy compares the Reagan and Biden economic plans

When it comes to government intervention, there is not much new under the sun.  The state’s objective is always to extract as many eggs from the golden goose as possible.  While Reagan’s economic team acknowledged the importance of keeping the goose alive, Biden & Co. operate under no such constraints.  Count on the current administration to enact new taxes on capital gains, dividends and corporations...  The rich will be made a target, assuming they stick around for the abuse.  In an increasingly virtual economy with an expanding remote workplace, the wealthy have options.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The American Rescue Plan," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021

Kevin Duffy rates modern day presidents and Hoover

Hoover - Inherited the Roaring '20s bubble, made it 10x worse when the bubble burst with all kinds of big government solutions. He also added fuel to a global trade war... not good. 

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

Ronald Reagan on government

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

~ Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan on attitude

A pessimist is someone who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

~ President Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan on attitude

Optimism is a choice, and one of the most powerful we can make.

~ President Ronald Reagan

Kevin Duffy on early comparisons of Trump to Reagan

There are huge differences.  Reagan inherited a 14 year bear market in stocks and 34 year bear market in bonds. Government debt/GDP had continually fallen since WWII. The baby boomers were moving into their productive years. The IBM PC was just launched. The Soviet empire was on the verge of collapsing. Trump is inheriting asset bubbles in stocks, bonds, and commercial real estate. Total debt/GDP is at record highs, rates at all-time lows (with much of the world’s sovereign debt actually dipping into negative yields not long ago). Boomers are just moving into retirement which will swamp an entitlement system that was never reined in. Bonds are probably on the verge of a multi-decade bear market. The government’s interest costs will explode as the political class structured its debt on the short end of the curve, assuming rates would stay low forever.

Why anyone in his right mind would want to put his name on this Hindenburg is beyond me. But, heck, the Trump brand has been immune to economic forces in the past, so why not?

~ Kevin Duffy

Walter Block on how the truth about Friedman, Reagan, and the Great Depression is distorted by language

Walter: Well, we spoke of being free to choose earlier; that’s of course the title of a famous book by Milton Friedman, an economist highly regarded by most free-market type people. I must say a word or two about Milton Friedman.

Q: Okay, shoot. Metaphorically; no sectarian violence allowed.

Walter: Murray Rothbard used to say that mainstream economists specialize in what they are bad in. If you look at Milton Friedman’s work, you can see that he’s very good on free trade, minimum wage, rent control, occupational licensure, and other topics…

Q: But he was a monetary interventionist.

Walter: Yes, he was a monetary interventionist – and that was his main thing, apart from educational vouchers, which are also a horrible idea. If someone says “monetarist,” who will most people come up with by association? Milton Friedman. He was just horrible on this; he favored fractional reserve banking, he favored the Fed, all sorts of government monetary and tax intervention, and he had the audacity to name his book Free to Choose. But when people were free to choose, what did they choose? Gold. He’s a disgrace!

Q: Don’t hold back, Walter – tell us what you really think.

Walter: [Chuckles] Well, I don’t mind disagreement. We have to have Krugmans and Keyneses – but the problem is that everyone thinks Friedman was a champion of free enterprise, and people will come to you, and me, and Doug, and tell us were wrong because “even Milton Friedman concedes…”

Q: It’s like the problem arising from Ronald Reagan using libertarian rhetoric to get elected, and then overseeing the biggest acceleration of growth in government ever seen until that time. That had typical results of too much regulation and government spending, and people think that the Reagan years showed that free enterprise doesn’t work. Just as people are taught that the Great Depression proves that “unbridled laissez-faire capitalism” doesn’t work – when, in fact, the Depression was the result of government intervention into the economy.

Walter: Precisely.

~ Walter Block, "Walter Block: Doug Casey is an Optimist," LewRockwell.com, April 13, 2013

Pat Buchanan on Ronald Reagan protecting the auto industry

Bush may believe he has sinned against free-market principles, but he is following the path of his great free-market predecessor. Ronald Reagan, too, was not prepared to see Japan take down the U.S. auto industry, or steel industry, or computer chip industry, or Harley-Davidson.

Believing Japan was dumping to destroy U.S. companies, Reagan put patriotism before ideology and imposed quotas on Japanese imports. He, too, was castigated by the same commentariat that is berating Bush.

~ Patrick J. Buchanan, "George Bush, Protectionist," Townhall.com, December 26, 2008

Gerald Epstein on Ronald Reagan's role in setting up the "Plunge Protection Team"

By March of the following year [1988], President Reagan, an avowed free marketeer, issued the rather curious Executive Order 12631. This Executive Order set up the Working Group on Financial Markets. The Working Group was comprised of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Fed, the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.


~ Gerald A. Epstein, Financialization and the World Economy (2006), p. 136

Ronald Reagan on the Continental Illinois bailout (1984)

It was a thing that we should do and we did it. It was in the best interest of all concerned.

~ Ronald Reagan, on the bailout of Continental Illinois, at the time the 7th largest U.S. bank

(Quoted from The Creature From Jekyll Island, p. 62, source: New York Times, "Reagan Calls Rescue of Bank No Bailout," July 29, 1984.)

Ronald Reagan on vision

There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.

~ Ronald Reagan, 40th president

Gary North on the influence of CFR on presidential elections

Except for Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, no one since the formation of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 has gotten the nomination for President by the two major parties who was not screened first by the CFR. Goldwater came out of nowhere. Goldwater's mailing list became the basis of Richard Viguerie's creation on the New Right after 1965. Nobody else wanted the list in 1965. Nobody else saw what it could mean. That data base led to Reagan's nomination, which could not be stopped by the Establishment. He took George H. W. Bush as his running mate, contrary to what he had promised his supporters publicly, and the media stayed neutral in 1980.

The media would not stay neutral with respect to Ron Paul if he gets the nomination.

~ Gary North, Gary North's Specific Answers, "Ron Paul Is Dropped Down the Memory Hole by the Media -- Too Late," January 11, 2008

Ronald Reagan: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" (1987)

In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards. . . . Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself... Freedom is the victor... General Secretary Gorbachev . . . come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

~ President Ronald Reagan, speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, 1987

Ronald Reagan on the crisis of Marxism-Leninism (1982)

In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. . . . But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens. [If the Western alliance remains strong it will produce a] march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.

~ President Ronald Reagan, from a speech given to the British Parliament in London, 1982

Ronald Reagan on the "last pages"of communism (1981)

The West won't contain Communism. It will transcend Communism. We will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.

~ President Ronald Reagan, 1981