Rick Perry Says Quantitative Easing Is "Almost Treasonous" ... While Karl Rove Defends the Fed
Presidential candidate Rick Perry said that it would be "almost treasonous" for Ben Bernanke to engage in more quantitative easing.
Karl Rove shot back:
You don't accuse the chairman of the federal reserve of being a traitor to his country. Of being guilty of treason.
Politics Aside, Quantitative Easing Doesn't Work
Political considerations aside, quantitative easing simply doesn't work.
Economist John Hussman writes:
Without question, one of the notions buoying Wall Street optimism here is the hope that the Fed will pull another rabbit out of its hat by initiating QE3. That's a nice sentiment, but it does overlook one minor detail. QE2 didn't work.
And as the Guardian noted Sunday:
Quantitative easing (QE) ... have contributed to social unrest by exacerbating inequality, according to one City economist.
As the Bank of England considers unleashing a fresh round of QE, Dhaval Joshi, of BCA Research, argues the approach of creating electronic money pushes up share prices and profits without feeding through to wages.
"The evidence suggests that QE cash ends up overwhelmingly in profits, thereby exacerbating already extreme income inequality and the consequent social tensions that arise from it," Joshi says in a new report.
He points out that real wages – adjusted for inflation – have fallen in both the US and UK, where QE has been a key tool for boosting growth. In Germany, meanwhile, where there has been no quantitative easing, real wages have risen.
Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that quantitative easing doesn't work to strengthen the overall economy or Main Street, and benefits no one but the wealthiest companies and individuals (and see this, this, this and this).