The financial crisis, nutured in the early 1980s

Op-Ed Columnist - Reagan Did It - NYTimes.com:

Paul Krugman finds the financial policies early in the Reagan Administration - the loosening of mortgage restrictions in the 1982 Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act - started laying the groundwork for shifting America from a nation of savers to debtors.

"the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it."

Reagonomics works!

From the Onion:

Twenty-six years after Ronald Reagan first set his controversial fiscal policies into motion, the deceased president's massive tax cuts for the ultrarich at last trickled all the way down to deliver their bounty, in the form of a $10 bonus, to Hazelwood, MO car-wash attendant Frank Kellener.

The best part is the faux analysis:

"Had Mr. Kellener received that money in 1981, like the Democrats wanted, it would only be worth $4.24 today because of inflation," Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. said during an official announcement of the economic policy's success at a press conference Monday.

The sad part is that while the Onion's numerical mysticism is tongue-in-cheek, this kind of game-playing often isn't. The Defense Department recently announced that sectarian violence in Iraq was down because people shot in the front of the head were considered "criminal deaths" whereas back-of-the-head hits were called "sectarian."

And for those who care to analyze faux news, if Mr Kellener had invested that $10 from 1981 in an index fund with an average annual return of 10%, he'd currently have $119.