Ford’s Economy

Crouse, Eric R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_4

Eric R. Crouse²

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Abstract

This chapter covers the key people and economic issues of the Gerald Ford administration. In Congress, there was a strong presence of liberal and progressive politicians, especially after the midterm election in 1974 when the Democratic Party scored impressive victories. At this stage, few Republican politicians were ready to embrace the new supply-side ideas presented in the Wall Street Journal. The chapter goes on to explain why economists and others who challenged the Keynesian mindset made little headway in political circles even though high inflation and recession burdened the American people.

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Notes

1.
John Robert Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 91–92.
2.
Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Berkley Books, 1980), 305, 310.
3.
Following another twist, one historian suggests that the goal of Ford’s political policymaking was to earn the gratitude of New York Senator James Buckley and, thus, gain his support for the 1976 presidential election. See Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, 95.
4.
Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1990), 65. “A New Holiday,” Newsweek, August 5, 1974, 56.
5.
Ford, A Time to Heal, 41–42.
6.
Ibid., 122.
7.
Robert M. Collins, Transforming America: Politics and Culture in the Reagan Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 8. W. Carl Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy: Policy in an Age of Limits (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 28.
8.
Herbert Stein, Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy from Roosevelt to Clinton, Third Revised Edition (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1994), 209.
9.
Quoted in Ford, A Time to Heal, 147.
10.
Ibid., 28, 131.
11.
Ibid., 190.
12.
Ibid., 132, 148.
13.
Ibid., 189.
14.
Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007), 66.
15.
William E. Simon, A Time for Truth (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1978), 105.
16.
John Chamberlain, “Economic ‘Gospel’ Available to Ford,” Evening Independent (St. Petersburg, FL), September 27, 1974, 20A.
17.
Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, 67–68.
18.
Quoted in Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, 70–71.
19.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 28–29.
20.
Simon, A Time for Truth, 120.
21.
Ibid., 91. According to Simon, “[a]pproximately 70% of the long-term capital funds available in private money markets was being borrowed by the federal government and 80% by governments at all levels” (95).
22.
Jeff Bloodworth, “‘The Program for Better Jobs and Income’: Welfare Reform, Liberalism, and the Failed Presidency of Jimmy Carter,” International Social Science Review, 82, nos. 3–4 (2006): 138.
23.
Milton Friedman, “The Politics of Economics,” Newsweek, October 16, 1978, 92.
24.
Milton Friedman, “Ford’s Budget,” Newsweek, February 9, 1976, 64.
25.
Martin Anderson, Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1978), 134.
26.
Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2001), 106–14.
27.
Ken Auletta, The Streets Were Paved with Gold (New York: Random House, 1979), 138.
28.
Friedman, Free to Choose, 101.
29.
Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, 90.
30.
William F. Buckley Jr., Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004), 518, 521–22, 531–32, 542.
31.
Auletta quoted in Friedman, Free to Choose, 101.
32.
Auletta, The Streets Were Paved with Gold, 32.
33.
Simon, A Time for Truth, 130.
34.
Ibid., 135–136, 141–142.
35.
Milton Friedman, “New York City,” Newsweek, November 17, 1975, 90.
36.
“New York City Is ‘Stink City,’” Daily Item (Sumter, SC), July 2, 1975, 16B.
37.
Ford, A Time to Heal, 305.
38.
Ibid., 308–309. Also, see Mike Waters, “Senate Panel Votes New York $4 Billion Loan Guarantees,” Kentucky New Era (Hopkinsville, KY), October 30, 1975, 1.
39.
Quoted in Ford, A Time to Heal, 305.
40.
Quoted in Simon, A Time for Truth, 134.
41.
Evening News (Newburgh, NY), October 25, 1975, 7A.
42.
Simon, A Time for Truth, 171.
43.
Ford, A Time to Heal, 128.
44.
Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), 399.
45.
Simon, A Time for Truth, 143. Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 516. “The Governor’s Appeal,” Hour (Norwalk, CT), October 25, 1975, 4.
46.
Quoted in Simon, A Time for Truth, 143.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, Fifth Edition (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 41–47.
49.
Simon, A Time for Truth, 167, 169.
50.
Auletta, The Streets Were Paved with Gold, 91, 100.
51.
“Bill Walton Identifies with Radicals,” Blade (Toledo), March 15, 1975, 19.
52.
Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1999), 4–5.
53.
Ibid., 230–231.
54.
Thomas Sowell, A Personal Obyssey (New York: The Free Press, 2000), xi.
55.
Sowell, A Personal Odyssey, 132.
56.
Thomas Sowell, A Man of Letters (New York: Encounter Books, 2007), 92–93.
57.
Milton Friedman, “What Is the Federal Reserve Doing?,” Newsweek, March 10, 1975, 63.
58.
Ibid.
59.
Milton Friedman, “Tax Rhetoric,” Newsweek, October 27, 1975, 90.
60.
Friedman, Free to Choose, 116–117.
61.
Milton Friedman, “Bureaucracy Scorned,” Newsweek, December 29, 1975, 47.
62.
Brian Domitrovic, Econoclasts: The Rebels Who Sparked the Supply-Side Revolution and Restored American Prosperity (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2009), 9–10, 92, 96–97.
63.
Martin Anderson, Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 147.
64.
Quoted in Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, 310.
65.
Anderson, Revolution, 148. Also, see Domitrovic, Econoclasts, 11.
66.
Domitrovic, Econoclasts, 10, 88. Many key supply-siders also pointed to the importance of a gold standard as a way to discourage inflation.
67.
Ibid., 106–107, 109–112
68.
Bruce R. Bartlett, Reaganomics: Supply Side Economics in Action (Westport, CT: Arlington House Publishers, 1981), 127.
69.
Domitrovic, Econoclasts, 115–118, 124.
70.
Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, 75.
71.
Ira G. Corn, “Personal and Economic Freedom: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Imprimis, 9, no. 1 (1980): 5.
72.
Milton Friedman, “The Economy and the 1976 Elections,” Newsweek, February 17, 1975, 80.
73.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 28–29.
74.
Milton Friedman, “Interest Rates and Inflation,” Newsweek, August 23, 1976, 23.
75.
Milton Friedman, “Behind the Unemployment Numbers,” Newsweek, February 7, 1977, 63.
76.
Ibid.
77.
Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, 72, 78.
78.
Quoted in Meg Jacobs, Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2017), 152.
79.
On the “fatally wounded” liberalism, see Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 287.
80.
Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, 71–73.

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Tyndale University College, Toronto, ON, Canada
Eric R. Crouse

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Crouse, E.R. (2018). Ford’s Economy. In: America's Failing Economy and the Rise of Ronald Reagan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_4
Published: 14 February 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70544-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70545-3
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