The economic legacy of Jimmy Carter
Former President Jimmy Carter died Sunday at 100. He was America’s 39th president, serving one term between 1977 and 1981, and losing to Ronald Reagan in the aftermath of the Iran hostage crisis.
Carter’s term was plagued by a terrible economy with rampant inflation and an energy crisis. He’s famous for brokering the Camp David Peace accords, and continued his work promoting peace and democracy after he left office, earning a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work.
When President Carter took office, the economy was already in pretty bad shape. But long gas lines and double-digit inflation became the legacy of his administration.
“It was a horrific time. It was like getting a daily diet of bad news and trying to work through it,” said Stuart Eizenstat, who was Carter’s chief domestic policy advisor.
Carter’s successes on job and GDP growth were obscured by the inflation, Eizenstat said. Carter tried to rally Americans to conserve energy and boost optimism in his famous “crisis of confidence” speech in 1979.
“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America,” Carter had declared.
“I mean, his solution to the economic crisis that was going on was austerity,” said author and economist Kabir Sehgal, who is a Carter family friend. “That’s President Carter. I mean, he grew up on a farm in Georgia, and he realized, when you’re going through tough times, you have to, you know, tighten your belts.”
White House advisor Eizenstat said Carter’s appointment of Paul Volcker as Fed Chair is his most significant economic legacy. It came over objections from advisors about Volcker’s strict monetary policies.
“And he said to all of us, ‘You know, we’ve tried everything else: tight budgets, wage and price guidelines, anti-inflation czars, credit controls. I’m not going to leave as my legacy this kind of high inflation, even if it’s at the expense of my re-election’ — which it was,” said Eizenstat.
“Certainly, President Carter has been called ‘the greatest ex-president that the United States ever had,'” said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center in Virginia. “Through his outreach through health initiatives and election monitoring, we’d like to think has had an impact on both the world itself, as well as its economy.”
Carter’s Atlanta-based NGO, the Carter Center, will continue its pro-democracy and global development work even after his death.
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