The Interestings Thoughts of David Stockman

"Balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline." These are the tenants which Mr Stockman, former Director of Reagan's Office of Budget Management claims have been lost by traditional Republicans in a column in the New York Times.

He goes on to lambast the Republican Party in its current form for having failed to stay true to its roots. Starting with Nixon's decision, on the advice of none other than Milton Friedman to drop the Gold Standard, thus opening the doors to printing money on the part of the Fed, as well as every other Central Bank.

He takes a nice swipe at Mr Friedman's contention that the free-market will be able to set exchange rates and thus balance trade deficits. No Mr Friedman, not if everyone just prints whatever money they need, or not until a currency has inflated its way to oblivion.

He then moves on to hammer domestic spending, and military spending. As it turns out GW actually increased social spending from $260 Billion to $420 Billion-a 65% increase! Add the costs of two unfunded wars-also stemming from Mr Bush, and you begin to have a real problem on your hands.

Now kill everything that Mr Stockman says real Republicans stand for- only cutting taxes if they are matched with spending cuts. He is totally flummoxed by the fact that in the face of all the problems we have today's Republicans can't find it within their ideological framework to accept a 3% increase to the nation's wealthiest elite.

The basis of this ideological framework-a misguided belief "that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts".

My favourite however is how he blames Republicans for fostering the "vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector". I don't intend to be partisan here. In the UK Brown's Labour government was held equally responsible.

The truth is, deregulation is the culprit here, regardless from which direction it comes.

As an ex-pat American I occasionally take the liberty to use sports metaphors. In this case I would suggest to anyone who doesn't like Regulations why are there rules and and referees to police them in any organised sport?

Imagine hockey or American Football without rules and money is the only motivation.

Mr Stockman finishes in expressing his belief that unless we, and our politicians stand up and get back to basics-his basics admittedly, but still basics, then we are riding into an apocalypse which spells the end of the American Dream.