So you remember those halcyon Carter years — But were you old enough to understand? If so, how can you possible say that today compares to then?
Me, I was in Iran, doing business with the Shah ... then came Jimmuh, and the end of the Shah.
I understood what it meant when you tried to buy a house at 20% prime rates, or tried to buy a car when the bank was so worried about inflation they wouldn’t loan money unless you paid for the car with cash first. I understood what it meant when inflation was pegged at 12% annual.
The US economy had essentially shut down. I doubt a lemonade stand qualifies as knowledge about what was going on in the economy, the absolute dire conditions in America. The hopelessness was magnified by the ceaseless nightly airing of the Iranian hostages and that feckless President who seemingly could do nothing about it.
Jimmuh Carter was the worst President in US history. He nearly destroyed the country.
I understood what it meant when you tried to buy a house at 20% prime rates, or tried to buy a car when the bank was so worried about inflation they wouldn’t loan money unless you paid for the car with cash first. I understood what it meant when inflation was pegged at 12% annual.
That's exactly the point of this article. Things may not get that bad, but they are probably going to get pretty close -- and for the same reasons, too.
Jimmy Carter may have been a terrible president, but he gets a bad rap on the economy. The conditions you describe were pretty much inevitable because that a massive inflation of the U.S. dollar was the only way the U.S. government was able to pay for the abject idiocy of the Johnson and Nixon administrations -- i.e., when those two (particularly Johnson) deluded themselves into thinking the country could engage in a major military campaign in Vietnam while at the same time implementing huge domestic spending programs here at home.
Don't say you weren't warned!