We like to try to point the finger at the current and previous President for the financial troubles our economy is in. But the reality is that the ball started rolling on this debacle decades ago. Here’s an interesting opinion piece on exactly when this started. I tend to agree with the author…
We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.
Read the rest here, and maybe we won’t repeat the same mistakes in the future.