> What's so special about 1981? Two very significant things happened in 1981. After years of claiming the government couldn't help people, Ronald Reagan was e

> What's so special about 1981? Two very significant things happened in 1981. After years of claiming the government couldn't help people, Ronald Reagan was elected and Republicans have been working hard to make that statement more true ever since. A big part of that was deregulation of the financial markets. That same year, Jim Welch became Chairman and CEO of General Electric. He juiced the stock prices by selling off the company's prize jewels, real estate, and future, and for a while (before the utter collapse of the company) artificially raised the stock price so high that executives around the country copied him, and and an entire industry of vultures like Mitt Romney started private equity firms to cannibalize healthy companies for their personal profit.