Not to mention foolishly ideological, ridiculous and risible. Are they out to destroy our economy for once and all? Let Paul Krugman count the ways.
Well, there's the long-desired return to the gold standard on the part of Ron Paul and others within the party. It's part of the reason Republicans no longer embrace their old hero, Abraham Lincoln.
He was, after all, the first president to institute an income tax. And he was also the first president to issue a paper currency — the “greenback” — that wasn’t backed by gold or silver. “There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its people than to debase its currency,” declared Representative Paul Ryan in one of two hearings Congress held on Wednesday on monetary policy. So much, then, for the Great Liberator.
Then there's the bit, related to the above, coming from Paul Ryan about "debasing our currency."
Where did that come from? The dollar’s value in terms of other major currencies is about the same now as it was three years ago. And as Mr. Bernanke pointed out, consumer prices rose only 1.2 percent in 2010, an inflation rate that, for the record, is well below the rate under the sainted Ronald Reagan. The Fed’s preferred measure, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up only 0.7 percent, well below the target of around 2 percent. But Mr. Ryan is sure that the dollar is being debased and won’t take no for an answer.
Add to that the fear of inflation and Paul Ryan "wav[ing] a copy of a newspaper bearing the headline 'Inflation Worries Spread' at the Fed chairman. Trouble for Mr. Ryan again. The newspaper article was about inflation in China, not here.
The Fed chairman declared, correctly, that “inflation made here in the U.S. is very, very low.”
Just as the GOP fringe desire our lock-step adherence to the Constitution, a constitution of slavery, vote limited to white males, segregation, and the rest, they'd like to see monetary policy determined by the laws of the old gold standard and not by demand and supply, as their one-time hero, Milton Friedman, and just about everyone else continues to rely on.
...Even Milton Friedman saw the conduct of monetary policy as a technical issue, not a matter of principle; his complaint about the Fed’s role in the Great Depression was that it didn’t print enough money, not that it printed too much.
As Krugman points out, Abraham Lincoln is being kept in the Republican closet these days for his sins. What were his other sins, apart from his printing money that wasn't tied to gold? Well, there was that damn income tax. Then, too, freedom for slaves leading to the later decision to desegregate. Shudder! What could be worse for a Southern strategist than a free society, a people freed from slavery, and a dollar whose value is based on a free market?
Freedom, for all the lip service they pay to it, is a real problem for the right. There's none of that "give me liberty or give me death" in the Grand Old Party. It's "give me liberty and the right to tie everyone else's hands."
