The three big economic crises of the past fifty years were the stagflation of the 1970s, the subprime housing and financial collapse of 2008, and the Covid pandemic and lockdowns of 2020. To get out of the first crisis, Ronald Reagan chose classic supply-side economics: slash taxes and regulations and get the government out of the way.

During the second crisis, Barack Obama’s strategy was a traditional Keynesian strategy of loading up on nearly $1 trillion in new government spending and a vast array of new financial regulations.

In the aftermath of the Covid lockdowns, Joe Biden tried an even more radical economic doctrine called Modern Monetary Theory, which was Keynesian economics on steroids. The Biden team believed that Obama failed because he spent too LITTLE money, so they opted to spend and borrow multiple times what Obama had tried.

What were the results? Under Reagan, the supply side tax and regulatory cuts spurred a ferocious recovery that lasted eight years 1982-90. Under both Biden and Obama, the economy limped out of recession. The Reagan recovery was twice as strong as Obama’s or Biden’s.

Where does that leave us? Trump wants to jumpstart the economy with another round of supply side steroids and the media is convinced it will wreck the economy and make inflation worse. Go figure.