Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan died yesterday. What died was a husk of a person, who had very little to do with the "Great Communicator" we remember from the 1980's. Billmon has a good retrospective of the Reagan years on his website, to which I'll add only one thing. Reagan may have allowed the Volker Fed to do what it had to do to stop inflation, by strangling the economy with high interest rates for a year or so. But then he fired Volker (OK, refused to appoint him to another term) and put in Alan Greenspan, who's qualification depended upon him being one of Ayn Rand's disciples as much as his intellect. And he's been with us ever since.

Rant over.
Whiskey Bar: Ronald Reagan