The wonderful Carter years were a mess, Sawz... Interest rates were driven thru the roof... The Iranian hostage situation hung over the nation like a black cloud...OPEC flexed it's muscles... Yeah. lotta bad stuff went down...

But, in spite of the misery, Carter believed in fiscal responsibility and reduced the deficit every year he was in office... He also tried to get "cpnsumer nation" to change it's attitude toward a culture of "unlimited resources" to one of "limited resources" but just ran outtta time with too much negative stuff, not much of his doing, that plauged the country at the time he was in the White House...

This allowed Ronald "Charge it" Reagan to enjoy a recovery that was based on the same economic theory (deficit spending) that Obama used with the "stimulis"... But more importantly, Reagan went further... He wrongly told the nation that the reason for the recovery was less government regs and greater corporate participation in government... That was where the country began down the slippery slope toward where we find ourselves today...

B~