David Stockman Quotes
Let's have honest interest rates. Let's let the free market set interest rates in that zone where supply of savings is matched up with demand for real borrowing for capital projects.
Stockman, David. Interview by Bill Moyers. Moyers & Company, PBS, 19 Apr. 2013.
Few politicians ever admit publicly to this truism, but all in private tend to agree, Inflation is complex and it takes a number of factors to control it.
He had just been appointed Finance Minister in the midst of a severe recession with the Japanese stock market and currency badly depressed.
There was a financial crisis in the country and the world when highly risky home mortgage loans defaulted leaving investors and speculators in mortgage-backed securities in a poor position. The investors had been reaping very high interest rates for their risky investments, but this was the first time that this form of risky investment had failed. The investors, of course were looking for a bailout from government. When the Bush administration failed to bail out investment bank, Lehman, there was a panic and the banking system of the country and much of the world froze up. Bush and his Secretary reversed their bailout of speculators policy and provided various assistants and bailouts to the very bankers and other investors who had caused the economic meltdown. The policy was continued by the Obama administration although the bailouts were just as distasteful to Obama as they were to Bush, but most economists agree that the two presidents very distasteful and unpopular bailout actions probably saved the nation from a massive depression. After being bailed out by the taxpayers, the Bankers then paid themselves exorbitant bonuses while the results of their management put 10 percent of the country out of work.
There have always been economic and political ideologues. However in the George W. Bush administration ideological purity was a key criterion for appointment, and many appointments were made of ideologues who had no experience and had accomplished little previously. This quotation was a criticism of the unfettered free market ideology of so many of the Bush appointees. Critics like Bernstein saw this ideological focus as opposed to pragmatism, as responsible for the poor economic record of the Bush administration. Apologists for Bush and conservative economic ideology attribute the economic problems to cycles over which the administration and government had little control.
David Alan Stockman is an American politician and former businessman who was a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan (1977–1981) and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1981–1985) under President Ronald Reagan.
