Former Reagan Budget Head Stockman Critical of GOP

[citizen blues]

Excellent Interview with David Stockman on News Max

Stockman on the Wall St. bail out:

Crony capitalism is why we bailed out Wall St. In 2008 you had Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs in the third floor of the treasury running the country. George bush had no clue. The congress was buffaloed. He and Bernake went around, created panic in the beltway and became virtual dictators. It was a coup d'etat. And the fact is there were two investment banks left that were gambling houses. They should have gone to chapter 11. Goldman and Morgan. AIG didn’t need to be bailed out; the insurance companies were all protected by their regulators. It's just a holding company that's a gambling den that should have been liquidated. So I call that not only crony capitalism. I call that a terrible, drastic abuse of power and a permanent Rubicon, because if you can’t let Wall Street pay the price of its own gambling behavior, then why is anybody in America going to believe that free enterprise is good for you?

- snip -

I would say that a country that crushes the middle class in order to create a temporary bubble in wealth to the 1% on Wall St. is morally bankrupt.

Stockman on the Republican Party

The Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn’t stand for anything except re-electing itself, It's a coalition of gangs. The neocons are only oriented to an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy of big defense establishment and suppression of our civil liberties. That’s bad. The tax cons want to just cut taxes — any time, any day — regardless of the fiscal situation. That has gone to an absurd length. The social cons, social policy people — the right-to-life issue and gay marriage and all of that — that’s irrelevant to governing a democracy in a free society. That’s basically the heart of the Republican Party. In that mix, how can you find anything that’s going to stand for conservative economics, fiscal rectitude, free markets, sound money? It’s not there. The Republican Party is basically irrelevant to the economic crisis that faces the country.

David Stockman is one of the saner voices in the Republican party. He's still a fiscal conservative, but makes no bones about calling out the crazies and the corrupt. I'm not saying he's pure as the driven snow. As Reagan's budget director, he's far from it. It's still refreshing to hear a life long Republican speak some truth for a change.

[kentuck]

1. Stockman was the first person that I recall that came out and called Reaganomics a sham..

He should know. He was Reagan's former budget director.

[Dawson Leery]

2. k/r

[Carolina]

3. Thanks for this and

welcome to DU