David Leonhardt writes,

For three decades now, the American economy has been in what the historian Sean Wilentz calls the Age of Reagan. The government has deregulated industries, opened the economy more to market forces and, above all, cut income taxes.

Three decades. 1978-2008. I can remember airline deregulation and trucking deregulation–they happened under President Carter, who left office in 1980. There was a lot of restructuring of bank regulation–fewer interest rate regulations, better capital regulations–following the S&L crisis of the early 1980’s.

What else are we talking about here? Over the past fifteen years, what are the great acts of deregulation that have taken place? What did President Clinton deregulate? What did President Bush (either one) deregulate?

The narrative of capitalism run amok seems to be based on the Bush tax cuts and the allegation that Bush is cozy with the evil plutocrats. Is the narrative based on any other specific policy change?