dabbled in left-wing student politics, he was the mastermind of Reagan's 'supply-side' policies, the theory drawn from Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek that government spending inhibited economic growth and that monetary control was the cure for inflation.

Not since Keynes was at the Treasury in the First World War had a more committed economic ideologue occupied so senior a post at the heart of a Western government. And nobody since Keynes has written more revealingly about the clash between abstract economic principles and the overriding demands of political expediency than Stockman did in his own book, The Triumph of Politics. Following his self-confessed failure to achieve the spending cuts and the balanced budget demanded by his creed, Stockman wrote a hair-raisingly detailed study of the Reagan government's fallibilities - including a merciless portrait of the homely old President's economic illiteracy - which is indispensable to the student of government.

After failing to liberate America's entrepreneurial spirit, Stockman gave rein to his own. He took a job with the

Wall St investment house Salomon Brothers, founded a private equity firm and then a private equity fund, Heartland Industrial Partners. He piled up tens of millions of personal wealth and bought a huge estate outside Greenwich, Connecticut.

It was Heartland which raised the $9bn worth of debt financing from Wall Street through which Stockman and his partners bought controlling interests in failing businesses in America's rustbelt industries. And it was that same debt-laden vehicle which acquired Collins and Aikman, where Stockman installed himself as CEO in 2003.

Less than two years later, Collins and Aikman filed for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors and Stockman was ousted. The historic company was liquidated last year.

Stockman and the others are now charged with falsifying Collins and Aikman's accounts in order to defraud investors and creditors and with siphoning millions of dollars from the ruined company in consultancy fees to Heartland. His lawyer claims he suffered a personal loss of $13m and says: "Here's a guy who was putting money in to keep the company afloat." A jury will decide. The world will watch.