Myth of the Reagan Years

We need to go back to the Reagan Years. Many of you remember them as the Golden Years. Yes, those days did look pretty Good. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was it Demolished overnight. Reagan planted the Seeds of Destruction, or maybe he lit the fuse is a better way of putting it

America was an Economic Beast up until 1975. Sure, we had many warts, racial problems, Vietnam, Oil Shocks (also 1973, man, bad year) but economically, it was a beast and wealth distribution was fair (not equal, that’s for commies).

We still made most of our shit, lots of good paying union jobs, minimum wage was double what it is now in real terms, people got OT (even those earning the equivalent of $85k today, double what it is now) , a single wage earner could support 6 kids and a wife, own a home, send the kids to college (which was affordable), with reasonable health care costs. We had wealthy people despite high taxes but wealth and income inequality were not as significant as today.

Sure we had a Cold War, and Team B (Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bush Rumsfeld) tried to scare us with that to keep feeding the MIC, but while it made for some good movies and novels not many of us got too excited about it. MAD let us sleep easily

Then the real War kicked off, the War against the Middle Class. The Trilateral Commission’s First Presidency, Jimmy Carter the Peanut Farmer, himself a TLC member. He brought in Volcker, a fellow TLC member to run the Fed. Oh my.

There was a bit of inflation still, mostly due to wage growth and OPEC. While this hurt those on fixed income, it wasn’t that bad.

Volcker in 1978 gave a lecture at Warwick University in England on November 9 and said :

“A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate object for the 1980s.”

A year later, after being appointed Fed Chairman he raised key US interest rates in 1979 (at the same time as the Bank of England) by 300% to near 20% levels where he triggered the worst US recession since the 1930’s.

Back then the Fed did not control all banks. We had S & L’s which competed for business and provided decent interest rates on savings to off set inflation. Unions made sure wages were adjusted for inflation. The minimum wage was increased. Tough for older people on fixed income but we didn’t have as many old people then.

Volcker blamed the extremely high inflation of 1979-82 on worker wage demands. Partly true but conveniently ignored the other cause of global inflation then, soaring prices of oil and grains through to the 1980’s as a result of geopolitical actions of Volcker’s patron, David Rockefeller, in creating the oil shocks of the 1970’s.

So then comes Reagan to save the day, backed by Trumps mentor Roy Cohn , Reagan beats the Peanut Farmer thanks to the October Surprise and promising to be TLC free (he kept Volcker and his VP Bush was also TLC member). I voted for him as Republican.

So much happened in the Reagan Years that I was mostly unaware of at the time. Below is a Timeline

1980’s

There was still a heck of a lot of trade going on in the world when tariffs were common. As late as 1975, our imports and exports were pretty much in balance (we had a $12 billion surplus).

And then came the neoliberal sales pitch. They said if only we could get rid of those tariffs by reducing them to zero or very, very low numbers, American consumers would benefit because big retailers like Walmart could buy products made with cheap labor from overseas instead of from higher-paid American workers. Prices, in other words, would be lower for consumers.

The result has been the shuttering of over 70,000 US factories and the loss of around 8 million good often-unionized manufacturing jobs. It typically takes companies between one and two decades to shift manufacturing overseas, given how large a logistical operation it involves, and reversing the process will probably also take a decade or two. Perhaps longer given the decline in skilled labor thats taken place over the last 30+ years.

Remember Ronald Reagan's "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"? Reagan then presided over one of the greatest expansions of government in American history

Under Reagan, the national debt almost tripled, from $907 billion in 1980 to $2.6 trillion in 1988. Under Reagan, the federal workforce increased by about 324,000 to almost 5.3 million people. uniformed military personnel only accounted for 26 percent of the increase. 3.4 million employees were Federal Civilian Workers compared to 2.3 million today

In 1980, the last year that Reagan's predecessor set spending priorities, the defense budget was $143 billion; by the time Reagan's second term began, it was headed over $300 billion. Even if you deduct the effects of inflation, Reagan managed to boost the buying power of the Pentagon's budget by 40% in four years. Congress reigned him in during the 2nd term (the House was controlled by Democrats) .

1981-Reagan massively cut taxes on rich people. He cut the top tax bracket for billionaires and multimillionaires from 74% to 25%. (There were only 13 billionaires in America then)

When it became apparent the tax cuts were too large and economic growth would not replace the revenues he raised taxes on working-class people.

For example, he put a tax on Social Security income and unemployment income, and put in a mechanism to track and tax tips income all of which had previously been tax-free (tips were rarely monitored)

He ended the deductibility of credit-card, car-loan and student-debt interest

1981-He crushed PATCO (the air traffic controllers’ union) and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American workforce when he came into office to around 13% at the end of the Reagan/Bush presidencies.

1981-In June , less than six months after Reagans inauguration, the United States approved a new offshore possibility, the international banking facility. The United States was another step closer to becoming a tax haven for money launderers

1982-Stock buybacks used to be illegal following the 1929 crash. They were considered stock manipulation, because mechanically it does support the share price. But President Regan rescinded the law

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, which eliminated loan-to-value ratios and interest rate caps for S&Ls, and also allowed them to hold 30% of their assets in consumer loans and 40% in commercial loans. Setting the stage for the Savings & Loan crisis that peaked by 1989

With reward uncoupled from risk, zombie thrifts began paying higher and higher rates to attract funds. S&Ls also began investing in riskier commercial real estate and even riskier junk bonds.

it would be taxpayers [through the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC)]—not the banks or S&Ls officials—who would be left holding the bag.

1982, President Reagan would sign NSDD 77 which would launch the Special Planning Group led by Bush. Later investigations showed that federally coordinated "off the books" Iran-Contra smuggling operations began

Beginning in 1982, as part of the highly classified Continuity of Government (COG) program, North used the PROMIS software to develop a secretive database known as Main Core to track millions of dissidents (ie those opposed to government policies)

1982-The Reagan administration signs in August 1982 a third joint communiqué with the People’s Republic of China to normalize relations. It reaffirms the U.S. commitment to its One-China policy.

1983, President Ronald Reagan issued a memorandum expanding Bayh-Dole to include corporations of all sizes.

The original bill passed in 1979 was a default policy of transferring titles on government-supported inventions to small businesses and nonprofit contractors, including universities.

Horace M. Gray, associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Illinois it was

“quite unthinkable that the Federal Government should tax the citizens of this country to secure funds for scientific research, on the grounds that such research promotes the general good, and then turn the results of such research over to some private corporation on an exclusive, monopoly basis. This amounts to public taxation for private privilege and violates one of the basic tenets of our democratic faith.”

1983 April 20, 1983, The Social Security Amendments of 1983 laid the foundation for 30-years of federal embezzlement of Social Security money in order to use the money to pay for wars, tax cuts and other government programs.

The payroll tax hike of 1983 generated over 3 trillion in surplus Social Security revenue over 30 years

It allowed the government to transfer $2.7 trillion from the Social Security fund to the general fund

1983, among other changes BLS inflation calculation was switched from tracking mortgages and other housing costs to tracking “owners’ equivalent rent,” making the measurement less volatile and allowing manipulation to reduce CPI and thus COLA’s used to calculate Social Security and Wage increases

1983. Congress passed the NED Act . The structure of the NED essentially functions as a private CIA political operations arm of an invisible, secret government beyond accountability and beyond the reach of the law.

1983-The bugged version of PROMIS was a result of collusion between Earl Brian, Reagans envoy to Iran, and Rafi Eitan, director of the Israeli intelligence agency Lekem and was distributed around the world by Robert Maxwell, father of Jeffrey Epsteins girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

BCCI was a Mossad/CIA affiliated bank that was involved in numerous scandals of the 1980s, including financing the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra secret arms deals and serving as a CIA drug trafficking and money laundering conduit for Pakistani state

Maxwell sold China PROMIS and access to Israel's secret backdoor. Eitan arranged for Robert Maxwell to sell the software to Los Alamos. FBI documents obtained under the FOIA show evidence linking the nuclear technology thefts from Los Alamos to a joint operation by Mossad and China.

1984-CIA Director and Cohn friend William Casey began an extensive PR campaign aimed at shoring up public support for Reagans Latin American policies, including support of the Contra paramilitaries. This domestic propaganda effort was technically illegal so they outsourced the job to the private sector

Cohn brought his close friend, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, to the White House to help out. Murdoch, benefited greatly from his friendship with the administration, which allowed Murdoch to increase his U.S. media holdings and to create the Fox Broadcasting Corporation in 1987.

1984, the United States would bypass the Antilles irritant entirely and waive the 30 percent withholding tax under a new loophole. Foreign investors unlike citizens would pay no tax on their bond income in US. The worlds hot money would roll in to what was now the world’s largest tax haven

In February 1983, in a program called Project Democracy, the administration proposed the program be funneled through federal agencies. Congress, seeking a program that was independent and bipartisan, refused to approve the plan.

1984, a newly created, private, nongovernmental organization, or NGO, called the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) opened its doors in Washington.. Its mission was to doctor systemic US propaganda as a weapon to unseat regimes around the world who were not willing to cooperate with Washingtons overall agenda

NED was implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. Oliver L. North called the operation Project Democracy in his computer messages. Norths operation was the endowments ³secret arm.³ Further stories appeared when an organization administering four endowment grants was linked to the Iran-Contra controversy.

1984 the FCC removed third-party sponsorship requirements from debate coverage. The U.S. Supreme Court then ruled that broadcasters may exclude third-party candidates or other minor candidates from debates on the basis of content neutrality and because debates are not viewed as public forums. Thats what screwed RFK Jr and every independent since Ross Perot

1984-Reagan visits China in April and in June, the U.S. government permits Beijing to make purchases of U.S. military equipment.

1985-After Sen Tower arranged for Maxwell to meet with leadership of Sandia National Laboratories (formerly Los Alamos Z division),. Maxwell sold Sandia a copy of PROMIS software . Shortly after retirement Sen Tower relayed to Reagan Maxwells request for help in arming Iran as a means to trade for American hostages and received a a positive response."

By 1985, S&L assets had shot up by over 50%—far faster growth than banks. S&L growth was especially robust in Texas. Some state legislators allowed S&Ls to double down by allowing them to invest in speculative real estate. Still, more than a third of S&Ls were not profitable as of 1983.

1986-The National Vaccine Act eliminated vaccine makers liability, recognizing that drug companies no longer had any incentive to make vaccines safe”an order for HHS to study vaccine injuries, work to improve vaccine safety, and report to Congress on its progress every two years. It has not sent one safety report to Congress in over 30 years.

1986-The Immigration Reform and Control Act altered U.S. immigration law by making it illegal to knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and establishing financial and other penalties for companies that employed illegal immigrants. The act also legalized most illegal immigrants who had arrived in the country prior to January 1, 1984, almost 3 million.

Despite this by 1989 we had almost as many illegal immigrants as when Reagan took office, meaning there were up to 3 million illegal aliens who came in during Reagan years. Big Business wanted cheap labor to suppress wages

1986, Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which forbade hospitals from denying emergency care services based on immigration status.

1986 Afghan guerrillas were given Stinger antiaircraft missiles . They used the missiles to shoot down armored Soviet helicopter gunships, and as a result, the guerrillas and their supply caravans have been able to move with much less fear of being attacked from the air. Cost Totals $2 Billion

1986- passage of Reagan's Anti-Drug Abuse Act , after which incarceration for non-violent offenses dramatically increased as did the privatization of the Prison Industrial Complex

Failing S&Ls were allowed to keep lending. By 1987 the FSLIC had become insolvent. Rather than allowing it and S&Ls to fail as they were destined to do, the federal government recapitalized the FSLIC. For a while longer, the S&Ls were allowed to continue to pile on risk.

1987 Fauci appointed head of NIAID in 1984 and in charge of Federal AIDS funding promoted the use of AZT based on the published Fischl study which observed patients for only 4 months. It was financed by AZT manufacturer Wellcome (today GSK), and allegedly placed sicker patients in the placebo group. Despite its toxicity Fauci recommended it for asymptomatic patients

1987- Fairness Doctrine repealed by Ronald Reagans pro-broadcaster FCC, the doctrine can be traced back to the early days of broadcast regulation. Coincidentally his buddy Murdoch started up Fox News this year

1987-Stock markets raced upward during the first half. By late August, the DJIA had gained 44 percent in a matter of seven months, stoking concerns of an asset bubble. The federal government disclosed a larger-than-expected trade deficit and the dollar fell in value. On Friday October 16, the DJIA had lost 4.6 percent.

On Monday 10/19 the DJIA crashed at the opening bell and eventually finished down 508 points (22%). The Fed led by newly appointed chairman Alan Greenspan encouraged banks to continue to lend on their usual terms. Stock markets quickly recovered a majority of their Black Monday losses.

Following the crash Reagan created the Presidents Plunge Protection Team by Executive Order which has been propping up markets ever since and creating larger and larger bubbled

Officially named the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.

1988 , 3 July ,USS Vincennes guided missile cruiser launched a surface-to-air missile and shot down an Iranian Airbus A300B2-203 which was completing a passenger flight. All 290 people aboard died: 274 passengers (including 65 children)

It should be noted that when the missile was launched the USS Vincennes was located in Iranian waters. The Pentagon stated that the Iran Air airliner was mistakenly identified as an Iranian Air Force F-14 fighter. Lol

1989-The S&L crisis was arguably the most catastrophic collapse of the banking industry since the Great Depression. Across the United States, more than 1,000 S&Ls had failed by 1989, essentially ending what had been one of the most secure sources of home mortgages.

Well, I could continue but its just been more of the same thing since Reagan except with more Wars and Disasters to accelerate the destruction of the US Middle Class and accelerate Wealth Transfer to the Rich (that 36 trillion in debt is someones wealth) but when it comes to pay the debt you will owe the same share as Elon Musk and Donald Trump

But he ended the Cold War you say. Nonsense. The Soviet Elites noticed how rich American Elites were getting and surrendered their Communism for Neoliberal Capitalism. They all became Oligarchs with some of them buying Trumps properties. No doubt Trumps 1987 Moscow Visit after buying the CIA linked Resorts International was a sales trip to sell them on the idea and perhaps sell a few penthouses. Or maybe not. In any event the Soviets gave up on Communism, pulled out of Afghanistan and we basically wrote Russias new Constitution and had a good run looting their assets until Putin stopped it. Good Times

Not Good Times for Russians who were not Oligarchs as life expectancy plummeted and poverty skyrocketed. Of course, Putin himself facilitated in the looting while he was at St Petersburg in charge of granting licensed to Western Corporations. Perhaps this was why the Drunken US Puppet Yeltsin was allowed to choose him as his successor

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