If any of our clients can tell me who said this, when, and under what circumstances, I’ll buy you a nice dinner:
“We are destroying the small businessman. We are destroying Middle America. We are destroying the American dream.”
Sound familiar? Sound contemporary perhaps? It’s not. And once someone emails me with the answer to my question, we will announce the winner and complete this post with our observations about policies vs market returns. I’ll wait until this Friday to hear back; so have at it!
I’m supposing either no one read this post, or no one could find the quote, because as of Sunday, I had no answers from anyone. So, here goes:
The quote is from Congressman George Hansen, and it was related to Fed Chairman Volcker’s dramatic move to allow the fed funds rate to reach 20% – up from 7%. All along the way, in the attempt to control inflation, Volcker collected protests, criticism, even the threat of impeachment. A short history of this time can be found here. You will recognize the echoes of today in this account of a man standing largely alone, attempting to do the right thing for the economy.