Volcker, Reagan & history

WASHINGTON, DC: It’s important to get history right -- and economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has got it maddeningly wrong.

Krugman recently wrote a column arguing that the decline of double-digit inflation in the 1980s was the decade’s big economic event, not the cuts in tax rates usually touted by conservatives. Actually, I agree with Krugman on this. But then he asserted that Ronald Reagan had almost nothing to do with it. That’s historically incorrect. Reagan was crucial.