if you want to know how things 'really' work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlyle_Group

But the economy is in the tank (except for bankers), and we have interest rates of 0% (for the bankers) to 32% and up (for those borrowing from the bankers).

Server glitch... duplicate.

Virtually every Reagan economic policy was an abysmal failure, tempered in the depth of its failure only by the success of policies set in motion by Carter a year or more before Reagan took office.

Reagan entered the White House after the one and only recession during the Carter years, an historicaly brief one of just 6 months (Jan.-June 1980) purposely induced by Fed Chairman Paul Volker in order to reduce Nixon/Ford's out-of-control inflation arc, was completely over, the annualized rate of inflation was ALREADY declining since March 1980 as were Volker's interest rates.

The unemployment rate, which never rose above 7.8% during the Carter years and then for only one month at the peak of said controlled and minimal recession above, was trending decisively DOWNWARD through the last half of 1980 and into the first three quarters of 1981, Reagan's first year in office.

Reagan's intial tax cuts caused revenues to plunge so dramatically he immediately enacted in panic what is still the biggest tax INCREASE of the past 40+ years in real inflation-adjusted terms, with at least 3 more tax increases left to enact during his presidency, unemployment reversed from trending downward during Carter's last year in office and into his first year in the mid-to-low 7s to 8...then 9...then 10...then to 10.8% beginning LATE in his first year in office, not as some mythical hangover from the Carter years, and continuing for the next THREE YEARS.

Mind you, Reagan's policies were presiding over a skyrocketing unemployment rate and abysmal private sector jobs creation over the next few years in the face of DECLINING inflation and DECLINING interest rates! That's how lame they were. By contrast, Carter's economic policies presided over record high private sector jobs creation.

Meanwhile, NONE of Reagan's policies can be tied to whatever minimal increase in revenues during his presidency occurred. They can, however, be tied directly to INCREASES in business taxes gleefully signed into legislation by him. Was there a small increase in the stock market vs the Carter years? Yes, minimal. However, that just might have had something to do with the fact that Carter cut the capital gains tax from 39% to 28% in 1979...and that in 1978 Carter signed into legislation the provision requiring employers to offer the same sweetheart tax advantaged deals for equity investment for a more secure retirement to rank and file employees they offered to their high level executives, one of the biggest tax breaks for retirement investment ever enacted by any president ever...otherwise known as the 401K provsion in the tax code.

Reagan's annual average private sector jobs creation far underperformed Carter's...Reagan's annual average unemployment rate for surpassed Carter's...Reagan's supposed "tax cuts" were far less effective for positive impact vs Carter's.

When Reagan famously asked in October 1980, "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" the CORRECT answer was a resounding YES. Asking the same question 4 years later, the CORRECT answer was a resounding NO. Asked 4 years after that if we were better off than we were 8 years earlier, the CORRECT answer was still NO. Same with the end of Bush1's 4 years...the "It's the economy, Stupid!" election that he lost because "Reaganomics" was STILL a disaster, and the ansswer was still NO.

Only after Clinton and his Democratic Congress REVERSED Reagan's Supply-Side economic policies (again, without a single Republican vote for the revolutionary Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993) did the economy improve and improve dramtically for the vast majority of Americans for the next several years.