Sarah Palin: 'Refudiation' of $600 Billion Printed Out of Thin Air

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The Wall Street Journal has published this letter to the editor from Gov. Palin:

While on a United Airlines flight from New York City to Los Angeles this week, a fellow passenger handed me a copy of the The Wall Street Journal Nov. 15 op-ed by Alan Blinder—"In Defense of Ben Bernanke"—and suggested that I write a letter to the editor if I disagreed with the Princeton University professor's claims. Having read the piece, I told the passenger over my shoulder, "You bet I will."

Prof. Blinder seems blind to the clear and present dangers of QE2. Instead of seriously discussing these dangers, he takes us on an excursion to a Keynesian utopia, a mythical land in which endless government spending is an amazingly effective job creator and investors' confidence in U.S. Treasury bonds somehow increases as we sink ever deeper into debt while the Fed has its printing presses working overtime.

Here are some cold, hard facts from the real world: The first is the 8.7% 2012 unemployment rate predicted by the Survey of Professional Forecasters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. It seems the Obama administration's record spending binge won't result in job creation, but in unacceptably high long-term unemployment. The second fact is that long-term interest rates have actually gone up following the Fed's recent QE2 announcement. The markets took one look at the Fed's pump-priming plans and decided they had to increase interest rates—probably in order to compensate for the expected rise in inflation.

None of this should come as a surprise. Blinders off, common sense engaged, it's time for us to "refudiate" the notion that this dangerous experiment in printing $600 billion out of thin air, with nothing to back it up, will magically fix economic problems that were caused in large part by the government's interfering with our free market system in the first place, and then made worse by the government's reckless spending experiments with our children's fiscal future. Instead of the tired, old Keynesian ideas behind Obamanomics, we need to turn to time-tested practices that are pro-free market rather than pro-big government. Some call this "free-market populism." It's based on the realization that the best way to get the economy moving again is to get government out of the way, let the free market dictate winners and losers, and allow the private sector to grow our economy one job, one paycheck and one American dream at a time. It's the only way we can restore much needed confidence and certainty in our economy. This is the only way we will all be able to soar from New York to Los Angeles and throughout the heartland.

Sarah Palin

Wasilla, Alaska

- JP

Sarah Palin: Do WSJ Reporters Read the Wall Street Journal?

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Gov. Palin took to Facebook Monday to answer yet another lamestream media attack dog:

Do Wall Street Journal Reporters Read the Wall Street Journal?

Ever since 2008, people seem inordinately interested in my reading habits. Among various newspapers, magazines, and local Alaskan papers, I read the Wall Street Journal.

So, imagine my dismay when I read an article by Sudeep Reddy in today’s Wall Street Journal criticizing the fact that I mentioned inflation in my comments about QE2 in a speech this morning before a trade-association. Here’s what I said: “everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher.”

Mr. Reddy takes aim at this. He writes: “Grocery prices haven’t risen all that significantly, in fact.” Really? That’s odd, because just last Thursday, November 4, I read an article in Mr. Reddy’s own Wall Street Journal titled “Food Sellers Grit Teeth, Raise Prices: Packagers and Supermarkets Pressured to Pass Along Rising Costs, Even as Consumers Pinch Pennies.”

The article noted that “an inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America's supermarkets and restaurants…Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months.”

Now I realize I’m just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I’m surprised a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal doesn’t.

- Sarah Palin

Unlike their reporter Sudeep Reddy, the Wall Street Journal's editors found much to admire in Gov. Palin's NRO op-ed:

The former Alaskan Governor showed sound political and economic instincts by inveighing forcefully against the Federal Reserve's latest round of quantitative easing. According to the prepared text of remarks that she released to National Review online, Mrs. Palin also exhibited a more sophisticated knowledge of monetary policy than any major Republican this side of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan.

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Mrs. Palin's remarks may have the beneficial effect of bringing the dollar back to the center of the American political debate, not to mention of the GOP economic platform. Republican economic reformers of the 1970s and 1980s—especially Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp—understood the importance of stable money to U.S. prosperity.

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Mrs. Palin is way ahead of her potential Presidential competitors on this policy point, and she shows a talent for putting a technical subject in language that average Americans can understand.

[More]

- JP