Back in November, Sarah Palin delivered a sharp criticism of Fed monetary policy, as reported by The Wall Street Journal:
Sarah Palin, delving into a major policy issue a week after the mid-term elections, took aim Monday at the Federal Reserve and called on Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” with a bond-buying program designed to boost the economy.
Speaking at a trade association conference in Phoenix, the potential 2012 presidential candidate and tea-party favorite said she’s “deeply concerned” about the central bank creating new money to buy government bonds. Ms. Palin said “it’s far from certain this will even work” and suggested the move would create an inflation problem.
The criticism was met with howls of derision, but as this NY Sun editorial points out (h/t reader Jay), has proven prophetic (emphasis mine):
The big question as Chairman Bernanke gets set for his first quarterly press conference is how Sarah Palin was able to figure out sooner than everyone else that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of quantitative easing wouldn’t work. Disappointment in the Fed’s policies is being reported this morning at the top of page one of the New York Times. It reports that “most Americans are not feeling the difference” from the Fed’s “experimental effort to spur a recovery by purchasing vast quantities of federal debt.” It reports that “a broad range of economists say that the disappointing results show the limits of the central bank’s ability to lift the nation from its economic malaise.”
It’s a terrific story, and well-timed, given that on Wednesday Mr. Bernanke will break tradition and meet with the press. It is part of the Fed’s effort to get ahead of what is emerging as a public relations catastrophe, as gasoline is nearing six dollars a gallon at some pumps, the cost of groceries is skyrocketing, and the value of the dollars that Mr. Bernanke’s institution issues as Federal Reserve notes has collapsed to less than a 1,500th of an ounce of gold. Unemployment is still high. Shakespeare couldn’t come up with a better plot. But how in the world did Mrs. Palin, who is supposed to be so thick, manage to figure all this out so far ahead of the New York Times and all the economists it talked to?
In other news, the most intelligent, nuanced and intellectually adroit President ever — someone who can parse a sentence with his bare hands — still is pushing windmills and high speed trains as the key to our economic future.
I’ll take a mere commoner as the next president, you can have Don Quixote.
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Comments
Obama's mind is too deep for us to fathom. Who can see the bottom of it? Schoolboys, unable to resist the sight of any body of water, splash in the abysmal depths of Obama's mind on their way home.
Palin? Why Palin, she's as shallow as a puddle after short rain shower. How can she figure out anything without a teleprompter? Um, er, uh hum….
Wish me a happy Easter, sir.
It's time to admit that, regretfully, our president has a third rate mind. He may be intelligent — we don't know because none of his test scores have been released — but he was a third rate student by all accounts and his writing, except for Dreams which he did not write, is dreadful. Sad but true.
She's smarter than the average bear.
You do understand, that since she appears to be dead-right with her analysis, the narrative is going to be that her post was ghost-written. That's how things go. When the analysis is perceived to be wrong, she wrote it and she's an idiot. When it's right, someone else wrote it and she's an idiot. It's not too hard to play their game.
I agree Jake, that is exactly how it will be.
But what the nincompoops don't understand is that Leaders have principles and vision. They appoint competent Advisors who KNOW detail and analysis, and they listen, process information, apply their principles and then decide.
Gov Palin reads the analysis of a selection of different experts in Financial and Foreign policy daily. She processes what she reads and then makes her call based on conservative principles she TRUSTS having seen them WORK IN THE PAST!
This is what a POTUS should do!
In my mind, she is the Shadow POTUS.
And she does it with a blackberry in her left hand and Trig's dirty diaper in her right.
She is a modern day Abigail Adams – except this time Palin can run for the White House instead of just being first lady.
America is full of women just like Palin. Let her be the vanguard of an entire phalanx of strong conservative women to root out the good old boys in Washington.
Sometimes we forget that Don Quixote was a 100 years later satire of the military force that won the Reconquista, kind of like our own memories of the 1912 Presidential Election – so is the 2012 Election going to be a repeat of the 1920 Election or of the 1912-1916 Election of Wilson?
Alright turfmann!
Btw, I read your posts at HotAir often and cheer your sound commentary and beatdown of the trolls *__* (don't have posting privileges myself)
Thanks, exodus. Rumor has it that if you petition the Captain that you may get posting privileges outside of open enrollment (you didn't hear that from me).
Then again, the way the ban hammer has been swinging over there they're going to need to open up enrollment to refresh the troll reserves!
1. If only Palin had made those remarks as a sitting governor who was reelected by a greater margin than that that by which she won the office.
2. Nevertheless, central banks are supposed to be independent for a reason. Politicizing them, except in the most extreme of circumstances, may well do more harm than good. I support transparency measures like the Fed publishing its minutes, but perhaps Bernanke goes too far by scheduling a press conference. He doesn't sound like a magisterial central banker acknowledging his ultimate accountability to the public; he smacks of somebody in over his head & trying to protect what he has turned into a phoney baloney job. (There's been a lot of that in the last decade, especially in the last two years.)
3. Meanwhile, Obama's response to gasoline prices is to remain obdurate about exploiting our domestic resources–and to scapegoat the oil companies whom he does not allow to drill.
@Helen: Sorry, but Obama's mind is about as deep as his one-sided support for unions over corporations. Most union pension plans are heavily invested in the success of corporations while they beat them up over labor costs. The dog biting the hand that feeds them.
And as far as Sara Palin, Ron Paul was there first and has been talking out about this problem of misguided Fed quantitative easing for years. He was there with all the Tea Party ideologies before there ever was a Tea Party. Both the left and right are scared of him and have discounted him incessantly, not because one man can do much to affect their operations, but he was opening the eyes of the nascent masses of the dangers of the bigger government yearnings of both Republicans and Democrats. Sarah certainly is not as dumb as the left makes her out to be, but she does not fully understand the implications of all of the Fed's policies and actions – but that's what good advisors are for. I have a feeling she's starting to read Ron or at least others who see the dangers.
FRAUD: Federal Reserve Is Selling Put Options On Treasury Bonds To Drive Down Yields appears to be their latest (mis)adventure.
And then there's AIG. And we've seen commodity index funds like PIMCO and others buying up Fed bonds. Just take a look at PIMCO's annual report.
PIMCO Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund – 82.6% US Treasury obligations.
PIMCO Real Return fund – 84.3% Treasuries.
PIMCO Real Estate Real Return Strategy fund – a whopping 95% US Treasuries and only 3.4% mortgage backed securities.
Something smells and I'm not quite smart enough about it all to put my finger on it.
But exodus, everyone knows Palin doesn't read, just ask Couric.
The country is being run by cargo cultists. Ben Bernanke is sitting around with his history books on the Great Depression, confident that if he just does the opposite of what was done in the 1930s, he'll avoid catastrophe. Maybe what is needed is the capacity to understand WHY the things that were done in the 30s failed and WHY the things we are doing now are not helping. But like the cargo cultists, the "whys" are beyond them, just going thru the correct motions and chanting the right "woo-woo" ought to be enough.
@mel ….. LOL
yup, sadly a nice set up job by nicole wallace combined with the heavy editing of 8+ hours worth of interview tape, was assembled very nicely to achieve the desired result for couric and the journOlisters
but, 2012 is a new battlefield folks, and I fear for the deranged PDSers ….. LOL, there may need to be waiting lists compiled for the couch space in therapy clinics throughout Elitistsville when Hurricane Sarah makes landfall ……. standby for the booking on BAM to leak out …. hopefully in the not toooooooooooooooooooooooooo distant future (but there may be yet a month or two to wait) *__*
@Frank Koza who doesn't recognize sarcasm when he sees it….
Palin only predicted what all conservatives knew intuitively from observing history. It doesn't take a genius to realize printing money is going to get you inflation. Nor does it take a genius to figure out over spending, i.e. spending more than you take in is going to get you in a world of hurt financially.
The only thing you can blame Bernanke for is funding Obama's deficit spending (including his co-conspirators, Reid and Pelosi). He allowed himself to be suckered by the paradigm that someone has to finance the government if the Treasury can't get enough buyers. I would remind the people at the Fed that they are under no legal obligation to buy any US Treasuries. Here's a hint guys, IF YOU REFUSE buy those Treasuries it will force the Congress to face the spending issue.
Just goes to show that in a head-to-head match up Palin is smarter than the New York Times.
Well, actually, she's even smarter than that. But, being Easter, this is a day to rejoice, not point out obvious frailties.
The problem with Sarah Palin isn't that she isn't smart, it is that she is viewed by those who consider themselves smarter than the rest of us as dumb. You see, Governor Palin did not grow up on a tony coast, or attend a tony private university. Her family were not "elites", nor politicians. She was [ugh] simply middle class from a state that few people even realize is part of the United States.
When Obama ran for president, he did not show his true self, as Sarah Palin did. He gave those who voted for him a blank slate on which to project their individual meaning of "hope and change." For those who were out of a job with the recent economic woes, he was a job; for those who still lived in poverty, he was a wealth redistributor; for those who subscribed to white guilt, he was the absolver of all past sins. And, most importantly, he was NOT George W. Bush that the left had spent 8 years hating.
Outside of the last item, Obama is none of those things. He was, instead, a man who had excellect speech writers hired by David Axelrod who understood how to create whole cloth from fairy wings. A myth created by the King of Astroturf that could be sold to the American people like so much snake oil to people with a common cold.
But now, well into his administration, the unemployment rate is still tragic, with the number being held down by dropping millions from the actual work force. Jobs are not coming back as promised, we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan (although, if you pay attention to the MSM you would never know the wars still rage on), Bush policies are still being implemented, renditions are still the policy, Gitmo is still open, housing is looking at a second severe dive, inflation is hitting everyone at the gas station and the grocery store while the administration tells us there is NO inflation, the dollar continues to devaluate, and none of the campaign promises have been kept.
In the coming campaign season, Obama's greatest opponent is going to be himself. He is going to have to regenerate the excitement for a man who made so many promises that have not, and cannot be kept. His poll numbers with independents, the very voters who put him in the Oval Office, is around 35%. And his signature legislation, the Health Care Fiasco Bill, is as unpopular as ever.
Some of us understood that the Piped Piper would not lead us to Nirvana. We understood that Obama was simply a man who had been blessed to be in the right place, at the right time, but was unqualified to lead a nation heading for financial disaster. We were right then, but you could not convince a nation that was war weary and losing jobs to boot.
And what does Obama tell people now? That four years was not enough to keep his promises made? That it is still Bush's fault that jobs are not being created and the cost of milk is now as much a gallon as gas? That the FDR tactics of pitting the middle class and poor against the rich is the way to go? It is going to prove interesting, and my bet is that as Obama continues to see his poll numbers drop, he will become even more vitriolic in his effort to hold on to what he has. Watch for the lies, the blame game.
Sure, gs, all she had to do is allow her family to be bankrupted defending frivolous charges…
gs and people like him are why liberals love Alinsky; he makes it work.
If I had to read the tea leaves my guess is that Palin will run. You got a sense of what might be coming with her wonderful and thinly disguised campaign speech in Wisconsin. I expect she won't declare at least until the kids are out of school, about May 20th. The whole Palin family is going to need plenty of protection as they spend the last half of the year in Iowa, NH, SC and Florida among other places. Malignant leftist pathology will be in full bloom after she declares. She might wait longer – she is a master at playing jujitsu with the MSM. You can hear the rumblings of many engines being fired up from Palinland. If you're with her prepare for the fight of your life. If you're not, maybe you might consider that our nation is on the path to imminent financial destruction. The desperate games of can kicking by social democracies worldwide are nearing their end. The left are like medieval doctors who believed if you just bled the patient enough they would survive. Maybe it's time for a new treatment.
The meme around Palin resigning the Alaska governorship is simply another of many attacks in an ongoing attempt to destroy her. They thought they had her pinned down in a nice crossfire: numerous empty by damaging ethics charges coupled with a enormous drain on the family finances due to the high priced legal talent required to defend her. (That same game is played in Washington but many times we the taxpayers foot the legal bills). She slipped out of that trap deftly which enraged them.
Well, well, well … the unqualified, homespun, common wife from Alaska hit one out of the park over center-fielder Benny's head. I'll tell you something right now – Sarah Palin's got more smarts in her lower right leg than 98% of our present government, and any 1,000 clones of Joy Behar.
If either she, or Chris Christie, don't run for President in '12, it's because Charlie Sheen makes more sense in this country than common sense does.
Whatever. There's a guy representing Texas in the House who left a lucrative medical career in the '70's to enter politics because he saw this crap coming. Palin's got nothing on him.
"The left are like medieval doctors who believed if you just bled the patient enough they would survive. Maybe it's time for a new treatment." –viator
Excellent! That is the best similitude I've read expressing who the left are.
They have Alinsky-ed Sarah Palin, but we are on to their tactics. Our job as Conservatives is to counter their propaganda with truth. Great statements like yours do just that!
I agree that she is very likely to run, and it WILL be the fight of our lives to promote, protect, and defend her – or any Conservative candidate – against the Obama-Chicago way. Leftists have no bottom – no low is too deep for them; winning is all that matters. By any means necessary.
I can see Weimar Germany from my house.
-Sarah Palin
Putting Galls Law, the Evil Overlord list #12, and Matthew 11:25 into one smoothly-integrated post will be tough, but here goes.
Anybody who listened to the Administration try to summarize their Quantitative Easing plan realized very quickly that QE had a solid disconnect between Cause and Effect. Galls Law states “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked…”. Since this complex system had no basis in a set of simple well-working systems, any attempt at summarization looked very screwy, very fast. Any rational Evil Overlord attempting QE in their scheme for World Control would have passed this by a 5-year old child and promptly disciplined the minion who came up with it (might I suggest sharks with laser beams on their heads).
This is not a recent insight either, a student of history should be well aware of the phrase “you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children”
Might I suggest that our president run his ideas past a few young children next time, before dumping billions of taxpayer dollars down the rathole.