Back to the Future, from Galbraith to Trump

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I thought this was an interesting article by Prof. of Economics, Barry Eichengreen, reflecting back on the 40th anniversary of John Kenneth Galbraith’s book ‘The Age of Uncertainty’.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/print/age-of-hyper-uncertainty-by-barry-eichengreen-2016-12

For all these reasons, the golden age of stability and predictability that was the third quarter of the twentieth century seemed to have abruptly drawn to a close, to be succeeded by a period of greatly heightened uncertainty.

That’s how things looked in 1977, anyway. Viewed from the perspective of 2017, however, the uncertainty of 1977 seems almost enviable.
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Whether Trump slaps a tariff on Chinese goods, repudiates the North American Free Trade Agreement, packs the Federal Reserve Board, or undermines fiscal sustainability remains to be seen. Conceivable outcomes range from mildly reassuring to utterly catastrophic. Who knows what will happen? By today’s standards, Carter was the embodiment of predictability.
<snip>
But if Galbraith were writing the same book in 2017, he probably would call the 1970s The Age of Assurance.

So we might just make it to 2018…as we did survive the 1970’s. We even survived Reagan’s wiz. I was too young to care about much of the ‘uncertainties’ of the 1970’s, but remember my dad’s doom-n-gloom and the inflation issues. I was old enough to be pissy about those high gas prices cramping my brand new driving style.