stockman's take

NPR aired a short interview with David Stockman, the former budget chief of Ronald Reagan, last night. Mr. Stockman may have surprised many by saying banks needed to be regulated. He, who once ran a hedge fund, sounded surprisingly like Nobel laureate Krugman when he laid out his vision for small banks and a split in banking between deposit banks and wall street gunslingers.

He also acknowledged that the tax cuts, a key Reagan platform, did not work. He probably knew that all along, as did all the other Republicans, but their goal, after all, was to fill their wallets, country be damned. Each and every tax cut they implemented added to their and their friend's bottom line and that is what this was all about. The fact that so many not-so-well off people went along just shows you how brain-washed the whole country is. It is another example of people voting against their own self-interest.

Stockman also predicted that the era of tax cuts is over. What we are facing now is a decade of tax increases. The cutting is over, there is nothing left to cut. What we need now is to put money in the government's coffers so it can take of our long-ignored issues.