To blame or accolade him though is to give Reagan too much credit.

The fall of the Soviet union was a product of natural forces, the mid to late 80's expanding economy was a product of natural forces, the lack of realization of the liberal dreams of the Redmond's of the world is a product of natural forces.

The left and right and their obsession with Regan is bizarre. Both sides give credit to a dunce for their success and failure.

William Safire single handedly made dullard right wingers give credit to Reagan for the fall of the USSR, the Chomsky/Zinn left whine that their decades of failure around the welfare state is the fault of Reagan.

Reagan is the flash point of the "Paranoid Style of American Politics" of todays politics.

"moderated" political views: Zero.

As a false moderate" you gamely try to mimick that which as a rabid right winger you heartily despise for the sole purpose of attempting to disprove and discredit it.

Oh yeah: TLDNR. Stopped at your mention of punk rock.

The US has about 5% of the world's population. Large US companies - who operate all over the globe - are not that dependent on US employment since they can both produce and manage their operations from just about anywhere. The US economy is important for its highly regarded technology wonks and its dominance in financial and legal expertise, but as far as producing goods and services within US borders, US labor costs are not very competitive with most other locations, especially in places around the globe where future demand is being created.

After traveling to Africa, S. America, Asia, central Europe and other places that combined have many times the population of the US, it's fairly easy to see the huge pent-up demand in the rest of the world for goods and services that are taken for granted in the US. Many of these goods and services will be supplied by US companies.

The US economy (separate from US companies) has many traits similar to Greece - large, unsustainable public and private debts that will restrict the US economy from purchasing new goods and services as these debts are eventually paid off over the next 10-30 years. This will hurt US company earnings, but reduced earnings in the US will be more than offset by rapidly growing economies overseas.

The US government has done a good job devaluing the US dollar to make the terms of trade more competitive, and US exports have increased accordingly, but for most of the bottom 2/3 of labor market whose wage increases have not kept up with the US dollar devaluation, their standard of living has been decreasing.

The U6 and U9 unemployment ratios have been around 15-20% over the past few years and things have worked out just fine for US company stock prices. Obvioulsy social unrest becomes a problem when the unemployment rate gets too high, but even then US companies are significantly building up their presence overseas and can fairly easily move even more of their operations overseas if either taxes or social unrest become significant risk factors. And it's likely the US population response from those most affected by the changing economic enviornment will be much like Greece too - many fiery speeches, some violent demonstations, and lots of empty political rhetoric - while the rest of the world marches on.

Help, help, I'm agreeing with Marcos!