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Ronnie on the $50 Bill – It’s been bandied about lately by Tea Party members and Republican operatives that Ronald Reagan’s portrait should appear on the American fifty-dollar bill. Ah, all you cowboys, how about pulling up on those reins just a little bit, OK?

If Mr. Reagan’s countenance should one day happen to grace a $50 bill, Mr. Gripes will raise his hand and insist on his own candidate for the $100 bill: Minnie Mouse.

Recent revisionist history emanating from certain quarters posits that Mr. Reagan was one of the greatest Presidents in American history. Before Mr. Reagan is officially beatified, please permit Mr. Gripes to remind his readers of a couple of less-than-glittering moments of his Presidency:

You all recall the humiliating crisis of 1979-80 in which Iranian students seized and held hostage 61 Americans for over a year? They were released, after a seemingly interminable period of 444 days, on the very day of Mr. Reagan’s inauguration. Iran’s been a detested enemy ever since.

In his second term, in 1985, Mr. Reagan, secretly made a deal with the very same hated enemy. It went something like this: we’ll sell Iran arms, [without telling our citizens because we’re actually prohibited legally from doing this], then we’ll take the cash from that deal, and buy weapons for the Contras in Nicaguagua. The Contras will overthrow Ortega and his Communists in Nicaragua with those weapons. [In fact, 1,500 missiles were sold to Iran over three years.] To our addled President, he might have thought he was taking a look at a great movie script.

There was a slight problem, though: the money-for-arms deal was essentially treason, not only countermanding a law of Congress, but, worse to Mr. Gripes, Mr. Reagan actually arming the very enemy that had imprisoned and held hostage fellow Americans. Bill Clinton would have been lynched; God only knows what medieval torture would have been meted out to Barack Obama. Eventually the whole secret arrangement was discovered, and the Communists in Nicaragua remained in power; once again, the rest of the world laughed heartily at the imbecilic Americans.

Allow me at this point to offer a light interlude. Mr. Gripes was intrigued by an altogether frivolous detail of this swap: to get into the good graces of the Ayatollah as the exchange was being worked out, a birthday cake was delivered to him by Robert McFarland, a National Security Council senior official. Yep, a birthday cake for the Ayatollah: I’ve always wondered if there were frosting and candles on that cake; did Mr. McFarland serenade the Most Revered One with ‘Happy Birthday’, too?

Let’s move on: President Reagan, these days trumpeted as our fearless President not intimidated by the big, bad Commies and their Berlin Wall, apparently did not dare make any significant decisions without input from his wife’s astrologer [Joan Quigley].

Donald Regan, the President’s former chief-of-staff, wrote in his memoirs that Nancy Reagan relied often on her astrologer to determine the most favorable days and times for the President to fly on Air Force One or schedule meetings with foreign leaders. If Ms. Quigley indicated that Mr. Reagan’s astrological signs were unfavorable, designated days, and even weeks in some instances, were blocked off on his calendar as periods that no significant work, or even travel, was to occur. In fact, Mr. Reagan’s calendar book was color-coded to indicate which days were acceptable or unacceptable for Presidential activities. My God, this is the presumptive Leader of the Free World we’re talking about.  Ceasing to write at this moment, Mr. Gripes leans back in his chair, and shakes his head in stunned incredulity.

Let’s pretend to eavesdrop on a conversation between Nancy and the President:

“Honey, can I have a moment of your time?”

“Yeah, Ronnie, but make it quick. I’m having lunch with our dear friend Ida Lupino.”

“Ah, well, I’m planning to go to Reykjavík in a couple of weeks to sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with General Secretary Gorbachev. Is that OK with you?”

Angrily, “Ronnie, how many times do I have to tell you: unless all of Jupiter’s moons are in alignment with the trailing star of the Big Dipper and Tip O’Neill’s belly button, you’re under no circumstances to have anything to do with that Russian, OK?”

Softly, “But, honey, the arrangements have been all set. He’ll be real mad.”

“Listen, don’t cross me — the answer is still no. Just tell Gorby to cool his jets, and that you’ll sign that agreement next month, on the 14^th at 3:32 a.m., OK?

One last thing, Ronnie: because you’ve been disobedient and a bad boy, there’ll be no red jelly beans in your bedtime goody bag tonight.”

But don’t despair, guys.  Considering how things are done in this cockeyed country these days, I’ll wager George W.’s portrait will be on the $5 bill next week.

____________________________

Only Boom Times – In retrospect, the vast majority of Americans believed that the boom times were going to last forever. Forget about a collapse; the very idea of an economic downturn was scuffed at by virtually all of us. Roger Lowenstein, in his book The End of Wall Street, describes those frothy times as “a gale of mass hallucination.”

Looking back on his own behavior, as someone who in his gut has always mistrusted mass movements as irrational and potentially destructive, and who is a contrarian by nature, Mr. Gripes can only mutter, “What the hell was I thinking?”

Worse, Mr. Gripes perceived signs early on that, indeed, the fox was being ushered into the henhouse, and there’d be one hell of a reckoning down the road.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, hoping to be reappointed by newly elected George W. Bush, approved the huge tax cuts proposed by the new administration. Mr. Greenspan, in essence, went against his own belief system developed over half-a-century. The chairman’s imprimatur to proceed with deficits was sufficient to push through the tax-cut legislation; its passage was the end of the lofty goal of a national balanced budget. Huge short-term profits over long-term stability and a financial free-for-all became the mantra for the American economy. [President Bill Clinton, incidentally, was successful in balancing his last budget.] The astonishing fiscal irresponsibility and lack of institutional discipline that ensued were certainly foreshadowed by Mr. Greenspan’s blatant disregard of his own fiduciary duty as the country’s No. #1 regulator.

Another omen: Mr. Gripes happened to catch on C-Span very early in Mr. Bush’s first term a Congressional hearing in which Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission, testified. Someone on the committee mentioned to Mr. Pitt that there was extra money available for the SEC to utilize for investigative matters, i.e., to look for crooks. Mr. Pitt, to Mr. Gripes’ great surprise, refused the additional funds, asserting he had enough on hand. Consider that for a moment: a Federal agency turning down money. That never happens. Mr. Gripes was flabbergasted. What’s Mr. Pitt doing?

Now, it all makes sense. Congressional hearings, especially when ‘friendly’ witnesses are being questioned, are rarely spontaneous. The witness is often appraised of subjects likely to come up, and even a rehearsal of questions and answers may occur. My suspicion is that Mr. Pitt knew very well that he’d have the opportunity to turn down that money. The SEC chairman, perhaps with Administration connivance, refused those funds for a very specific reason: he was signaling to the huge cartels [Wall Street, Oil, Pharmaceuticals, Real Estate, Insurance, et al.] not to worry:  free-market forces will be unleashed, and there’d be no meddling regulators messing with the huge corporations from now on.

And that’s exactly what occurred – financial institutions leveraging loans at 20-, 30-to-1 [Bear, Stearns was king: 42-1]; lenders permitting knucklehead homebuyers earning $60,000 salaries to be approved for $600,000 mortgages; borrowers with no proof of income obtaining $500,000 loans; absolutely worthless securities receiving ‘AAA’ ratings; Wall Street firms and commercial banks fabricating off-the-books, ‘independent’ entities to create an illusion of less debt, thereby enhancing quarterly statements. Sure, it’s called Wall Street down there in the financial district, but, let’s be honest, it was the rootin’-and-tootin’ Wild West for almost a decade.

Do you recall the old Westerns in which the cattle rustlers and stagecoach bandits ride into town, guns blazing, scaring the daylights out of law-abiding citizens? The sheriff and his deputies throw down their badges, and ride like hell out of Dodge City. That was big business in America a few years ago. My goodness, we were so stupid.

Jim Israel May 10, 2010

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