I think we're so addicted to bubble finance at the Fed that they can't get out of the corner they painted themselves into. I think the Fed is making federal debt so cheap that Congress has no interest, Washington has no incentive to ever face up to our massive fiscal gap that is going to grow, and grow as we go forward in time and so we have a paralyzed system.
David StockmanIt's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory.
David StockmanWe need a wealth tax that on a one-time basis is going to take back at least some small fraction of the great windfall that the upper 1 percent, or 5 percent and pay down the government debt, pay back the federal debt because we can't put this on the next generation or they're going to be buried paying taxes.
David StockmanI'm just not going to spend a lot of political capital solving some other guy's problem in 2010.
David StockmanLook at what's happening between Main Street and Wall Street. The stock market index is up 136 percent from the bottom. Middle class jobs lost during the correction: six million. Middle class jobs recovered: one million. So therefore we're up 16 percent on the jobs that were lost. These are only born-again jobs. We don't really have any new jobs, and there's a massive speculative frenzy going on in Wall Street that is disconnected from the real economy.
David StockmanI think we're so addicted to bubble finance at the Fed that they can't get out of the corner they painted themselves into. I think the Fed is making federal debt so cheap that Congress has no interest, Washington has no incentive to ever face up to our massive fiscal gap that is going to grow, and grow as we go forward in time and so we have a paralyzed system.
David Stockman