Bill Gross? David Stockman says Bill Gross should stick to Shuffleboard

This is wonderful.  A wee bit of a mud fight.

As a producer for an ABC radio station in Detroit 30 years ago, I produced a handful of live interviews with David Stockman, a Congressman who became head of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan Administration.

Always intelligent, Stockman later became wealthy working on Wall Street and running companies.  He writes for his blog.  PB
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Bill Gross Should Stick To Shuffleboard—–His Case For Bigger Deficits Is Ludicrous
by David Stockman • November 4, 2014   

The once and former bond king has lost it.

After a long lament about deflation and the failure of massive money printing to ignite growth, jobs and incomes in the real economy, his most recent missive comes up with a better idea. 

Bigger public deficits!

The real economy needs money printing, yes, but money spending more so, and that must come from the fiscal side — from the dreaded government side — where deficits are anathema and balanced budgets are increasingly in vogue,” he writes.

Let’s see. In the case of the US, real economic growth has been faltering since the year 2000.

During the last 14 years real GDP growth has averaged 1.8% per annum—-the lowest rate of growth for an equivalent period in modern times.

In fact, it is barely half the average growth rate during the second half of the 20th century.

Not only is there no correlation between fiscal deficits and economic growth over those 50 years, but the real evidence is more nearly the opposite.

During the the golden era of sound money and fiscal rectitude between 1953 and 1963, for example, real economic growth averaged 4.0% per annum.

And that was achieved during a period in which the budget deficit averaged only 1% of GDP—with Washington actually recording surpluses during much of the Eisenhower presidency....
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Link: http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/memo-to-bill-gross-shut-up-and-stick-to-your-shuffleboard/