Ronald Reagan hailed the fall of oil prices as quote a triumph not of government but of the free market and not of political leaders but of freedom itself. This was this repudiation of the notion that there was any limits at all to consumption and to the American way of life, he writes. At the very same time the Volcker shock was sending American workers and unions into this huge crisis right alongside the heavily indebted third world. only got worse as the third world debt crisis exploded of course.