David A. Stockman > Quotes

“The great irony, then, is that the nation’s most famous modern conservative economist became the father of Big Government, chronic deficits, and national fiscal bankruptcy. It was Friedman who first urged the removal of the Bretton Woods gold standard restraints on central bank money printing, and then added insult to injury by giving conservative sanction to perpetual open market purchases of government debt by the Fed. Friedman’s monetarism thereby institutionalized a régime which allowed politicians to chronically spend without taxing. Likewise, it was the free market professor of the Chicago school who also blessed the fundamental Keynesian proposition that Washington must continuously manage and stimulate the national economy. To be sure, Friedman’s “freshwater” proposition, in Paul Krugman’s famous paradigm, was far more modest than the vast “fine-tuning” pretensions of his “salt-water” rivals. The saltwater Keynesians of the 1960s proposed to stimulate the economy until the last billion dollars of potential GDP was realized; that is, they would achieve prosperity by causing the state to do anything that was needed through a multiplicity of fiscal interventions. By contrast, the freshwater Keynesian, Milton Friedman, thought that capitalism could take care of itself as long as it had precisely the right quantity of money at all times; that is, Friedman would attain prosperity by causing the state to do the one thing that was needed through the single spigot of M1 growth.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“In fact, during the last 30 years, the real net worth of the bottom 90% has not increased at all. At the same time, the top 1% has experienced a 300% gain while the real wealth of the Forbes 400 has risen by 1,000%. That”
― David Stockman, Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin... And How to Bring It Back

“When they foolishly destroyed Saddam Hussein and his entire regime in the pursuit of nonexistent WMDs and ties with al-Qaeda, they literally opened the gates of hell, leaving Iraq as a lawless failed state where both recent and ancient religious and tribal animosities were given unlimited violent vent. WHY”
― David A. Stockman, Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin... And How to Bring It Back

“The true irony is that political progressives are so indentured to Keynesian theories of demand stimulus that they have eagerly turned the nation’s central bank over to Wall Street lock, stock, and barrel.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“it was only a matter of time before the very capitalists that FDR professed to despise captured for their own ends the programs he legitimized in the name of the public good.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“the GSE scalpings from the nation’s 150 million taxpayers were capitalized and transferred to a few ten thousands of investors”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“Rather than allowing the free market to dispatch speculators to the ruin they deserved, Krugman urged a massive stimulus campaign to put them back in business. "To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback," the learned professor intoned, "Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the NASDAQ bubble."

Greenspan followed that fatuous advice...”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“perhaps prompted by too many donuts in the line of duty.”
― David Stockman, Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin... And How to Bring It Back

“The bailouts, the Fed’s frenzied money printing, the embrace of primitive Keynesian tax stimulus by a Republican White House amounted to something terrible: a de facto coup d’état by Wall Street, resulting in Washington’s embrace of any expedient necessary to keep the financial bubble going—and no matter how offensive it was to every historic principle of free markets, sound money, and fiscal rectitude.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“There can be little doubt, therefore, that George W. Bush, and his father before him, carried out their imperial adventures in the lands ringing the Persian Gulf because they could. An accident of history had bestowed upon them a massive conventional war-fighting machine, so they went to war without having to prove the case or raise an army by taxing the people and getting a declaration of Congress.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“The bailout “saved” perhaps 10,000 jobs in Ohio, a figure that represents two-tenths of 1 percent of the 5 million votes cast there. So Romney’s de facto flip-flop on the auto bailout was both a profile in cowardice and proof that the Republican political apparatus believes that the party’s core free market principle is an electoral loser.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“Let the capital gains go back to the same rate as ordinary income.”
― David A. Stockman

“Yet the rise of Trump—and Bernie Sanders too—vastly transcends ordinary politics. In fact, it reaches deep into a ruined national economy that has morphed into rank casino capitalism under the misguided policies and faithless rule of the Washington and Wall Street elites. This epic deformation has delivered historically unprecedented setbacks to the bottom 90% of American households. They have seen their real wealth and living standards steadily deteriorate for several decades now, even as vast financial windfalls have accrued to the elite few at the very top. In fact, during the last 30 years, the real net worth of the bottom 90% has not increased at all. At the same time, the top 1% has experienced a 300% gain while the real wealth of the Forbes 400 has risen by 1,000%.”
― David A. Stockman, Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin... And How to Bring It Back

“Notwithstanding Democratic arm-waving, the Ryan budget provided that not a single recipient of Social Security or Medicare would face benefit cuts for a decade.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“Literally billions of dollars were paid in commissions, bonuses, and perks to a few thousand salesmen who carried the title of “loan officer.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

“In the final analysis, Eisenhower’s fiscal record is one of a kind. Between fiscal 1953 and 1961, total federal spending declined from 20.4 percent of GDP to 18.4 percent.”
― David A. Stockman, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America