Ted Cruz just named Phil Gramm his economic advisor. Here's Gramm's economic legacy.
If it's true that a man can be judged by the company he keeps, what are we to make of the appointment of former Sen. Phil Gramm as economic advisor to the Presidential campaign of Ted Cruz?
The short answer is that they're cut very much from the same economic cloth, which makes sense if one is advising the other. Here's a longer answer.
Cruz made the appointment Friday, when he collected Gramm's endorsement of his quest for the Presidency. He cited Gramm's role as an opponent of the healthcare reform measures proposed in the 1990s by President Bill Clinton, as well as Gramm's record as a professor of economics at Texas A&M University before becoming a U.S. Representative in 1979 and moving up to the Senate in 1985. He retired from Congress in 2002.
The distinguishing feature of Gramm's career in public service is hostility to regulation in almost every form. "Gramm, with his Southerner's mistrust of big government, believes that markets, left to their own devices, eventually will find the most efficient way of bringing together buyers and sellers," wrote former Securities and Exchange Chairman Arthur Levitt in his memoir, "Take on the Street." "'Unless the waters are crimson with the blood of investors,' he exclaimed in one meeting, with a finger in my chest, 'I don't want you embarking on any regulatory flights of fancy.'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-cruz-gramm-20160321-snap-htmlstory.html
"This is a mental recession....We've become a nation of whiners." Ex-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Tex., in 2008 just before the crash of Lehman Bros.
Cruz and Gramm both are mentally ill.
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They both loathe government regulation of business and have been working to dismantle it for decades. They both worked to create the "Enron Loophole" that funneled vast fortunes into energy company hands until the Democrats "closed" it, (of course both benefiting tremendously while it lasted).
Read about Gramm, and it seems that there's literally no part of the shift of wealth and power away from the people that Gramm did not support. And he's still at it.
All the worst assumptions were confirmed when Gramm said he'd vote for Marco Rubio, and then when he endorsed Ted Cruz. Hopefully, some of these right- and left-wing wall-punchers and pot-throwers will start identifying better targets than just some amorphous "establishment."
I was thinking along the lines of Phil Gramm: Corporatist Demon Prince, but he actually seems to have something of a dog theme going for him.
"He's always willing to rise above principle. He's got every quality of a dog except loyalty." -- Dave McNeely, political columnist for the Austin, Texas American-Statesman
"You can love him or hate him, but when you're dealing with him, there are 2 things you've got to remember: #1, he's smarter than you are. #2, he's meaner than a junkyard dog." -- Marvin Leath, former Gramm colleague
"Voters vote for people they like. Now Phil, I know his mother likes him. I know Wendy likes him. I think his dog likes him. And I like him. I've named four." -- Buddy Roemer
