Toles - Perry the question

[n2doc]

By Tom Toles

Warning Ben Bernanke against treason was a public-spirited way for Rick Perry to begin his presidential campaign. Nobody wants to stumble into treasonous activity and be tried and executed in the public square as a traitor to his country. So Ben owes a big debt of gratitude to Rick Perry.

The rest of us though, since we aren’t quite so well positioned to “print money,” we’ll just take our chances in saying that it’s Rick Perry himself who is flirting with sabotaging his country. First of all, the Feds JOB is to “print money” and their legal mandate is to match up the amount of money to the goals of a healthy economy and job creation. Either Perry doesn’t get this, which is alarming enough, or...

...Or he doesn’t want the Fed to fulfill its legal obligation if it might help the economy, if such helping ALSO helps the President of the United States politically. And regardless of what he says now, the damage has been done. The Fed is already scared into near-paralysis by GOP intimidation, and this has probably ALREADY hurt the recovery. Now Perry has just thrown one more loop around the Fed’s tied hands. Yes, I’ve given up the polite convention of presuming the Republicans would not deliberately damage the economy for political purposes, because the evidence continues to pile up that that is precisely what they are trying to do. What would the word for that be? Ask Rick Perry, he’s apparently got a mouth full of them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/perry-the-question/2011/08/17/gIQApFWaLJ_blog.html