None of the presidents in this millennium, including Donald Trump at his best, held a candle to the real economic growth rates that America enjoyed under the best of Ronald Reagan (7.2%, 1984) and Bill Clinton (4.8%, 1999).
There are many valid ways to measure the economy. Yet a contest for whom was the slightly less mediocre is … uninspiring.
Let's aspire to great growth. That begins with good money.
I am a protégé of Reagan Gold Commissioner Lewis E. Lehrman, the preeminent American advocate of the gold standard. And of the 23 official witnesses before the Reagan Gold Commission, I was one of only two who testified for gold.
Good money (of which the gold standard is the gold standard) is one of the key pillars of equitable prosperity. Stable money is an essential factor.
This is fact, not dogma. Copernicus wrote:
"ALTHOUGH THERE ARE COUNTLESS MALADIES that are forever causing the decline of kingdoms, princedoms, and republics, the following four (in my judgment) are the most serious: civil discord, a high death rate, sterility of the soil, and the debasement of coinage.
"The first three are so obvious that everybody recognizes the damage they cause; but the fourth one, which has to do with money, is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way."
John Maynard Keynes, the first celebrity economist, wrote in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace":
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
"By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.
"Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
Donald Trump surely would argue that his very good brain was unrivaled by these two pretenders (whose reputations have held up remarkably well for a very long time). Yet Trump relentlessly lambasted Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to weaken (or, per Copernicus, debase, or, per Keynes, debauch) the dollar.
As I wrote here at Newsmax:
"President Trump kept talking down the dollar, as pointedly covered by The New York Times in August 2019 amid many other sources. 'On Thursday, the president again publicly expressed displeasure at the relative strength of the dollar, describing it as a drag on American industrial exports and the result of Federal Reserve monetary policy.'"
And here at Newsmax:
"Donald Trump spent a lot of time pounding the table for a weaker dollar going on two years ago:
"Trump, a very 'in the moment' guy, surely had no idea that a weak dollar would cause inflation later. But ... you get the drift."
The Fed, however reluctantly, is very much a creature of politics. Powell, inevitably, succumbed.
I did not vote for Biden. (Or Trump.)
Yet even commentators ought to play fair.
Biden gave Chair Powell the latitude, and signal, to tighten. Powell did so, gently and capably wringing inflation out of the system.
Biden deserves great credit for inflation receding.
Moreover, Biden's recent appointment of Jared Bernstein to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers is brilliant. Bernstein understands monetary economics better than most, including what a mixed blessing (or curse) reserve currency status carries.
Reserve currency status is an "exorbitant privilege." Yet, by enabling America to run a persistent merchandise trade deficit, the dollar's reserve currency status erodes America's manufacturing base.
Whoever is president when Jay Powell hangs up his spurs would do well to pick Jared Bernstein as the next Fed chairman. Bernstein knows how to keep inflation down without crushing wage growth.
Good to have Jared Bernstein in the White House near the president's ear. He's smart, capable, decent and kind. Even better to put him at the head of the Fed.
Meanwhile, cutting inflation substantially without throwing the economy into recession is a major accomplishment. Love him or hate him, give Joe Biden the credit he is due.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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