Best case analysis is that this administration is the second term of the Carter Administration. Stock up on thick sweaters for the winter.
That Seventies Show
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Exterior Christmas lights were verboten. In Newport RI USN ships at the piers were forbidden to be “dressed” with Christmas lights. A Minnesota relative told me he became a Republican during Carter’s time in office. His drug store had a fire and the money borrowed for repairs was at 17 per cent interest and rising.
Living in SoCal, I already have a stock of thick sweaters. My late Fifties modest bungalow was built in the days of Reddy Kilowatt (“Live better electrically!), and I, frankly, cannot afford the California electric bill I would face were I to keep my house comfortably warm.
I was a stockbroker at the time and to this day I marvel that few people even wanted 17% Gov’t guaranteed bonds. One expert was predicting a prime (then at 21) reaching 40. As usual, the opposite happened.
“A Minnesota relative told me he became a Republican during Carter’s time in office.”
I did also. Though Reagan’s Nomination Acceptance speech also had a lot to do with it.
The change in the consumer price index comparing March 2021 to April 2021 was 0.8%, or an annualized rate of 10%. Since the end of 1965, there have been 61 occasions wherein that metric was equal to or in excess of that number. Of these 49 measures were registered between February 1973 and July of 1981. One was earlier. Five were registered during the 1981-82 recession. Three were registered during the most recent financial crisis (August 2007 to May 2009) when you were seeing inflation one month and deflation the next. Two were registered just prior to the 1990-91 recession. And there is one stray reading from 2005.
What’s amazing is that a half-dozen godawful things which happened in this country over the period running from 1963 to 1981 has resurfaced, to which we’ve added a few more. And there is no widespread public revulsion. The people who are revolted by this weren’t voting Democratic to begin with. The rest of the country is just amused to be wrecking things.
Please no, not Carter …
“I can’t drive FIFTY-FIVE!”