The Classic Liberal Blog

Norm Ornstein of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), threw a cheap-shot at Sarah Palin in the Financial Times today.

Obama under fire over falling dollar (emphasis added)

The falling US dollar is giving ammunition to the critics of the Obama administration and fuelling broader concerns about the potential erosion of America’s reserve currency status.

Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential Republican candidate, on Wednesday sought to link the dollar decline to rising US indebtedness and dependence on foreign oil. “We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

With other nations also expressing concern about dollar weakness, the administration is at pains to emphasise that it understands the responsibilities that come with issuing the world’s reserve currency and will live up to them.

Angst about the dollar – which has fallen 11.5 per cent on a trade-weighted basis over the past six months – extends beyond ideological conservative political circles.

Last week, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, warned that “the United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency.”

“The dollar has always been a testosterone issue among America’s political classes,” said Norm Ornstein, a veteran analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

“This time there may be a legitimate debate to be had over the dollar’s reserve status, but Sarah Palin is not qualified to participate in it.”

Score another plus for Sarah Palin!

On their website, AEI claims to be "committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise." However, after reading Ornstein's comment about Sarah Palin, I highly doubt it.

Bill Quick sums it up best in Screw A Bunch of Legitimate:

You probably think most Americans should have little or no voice in your “legitimate” debate, either.

Right there, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with the careerist, credentialist conservative mandarinate. These fucktards tell us libertarians we have to accept every shit sandwich they try to ram down our throats, in the name of “big tent” conservatism, but when somebody doesn’t meet their self-appointed standards for “legitimacy,” that tent abruptly becomes ever so much smaller.

Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207) has 301 co-sponsors in the House, and it's companion bill in the Senate has already attracted 30 co-sponsors. And it's popular with "we the people" too!

Cheap-shots by elitists aren't going to slow this down. Too many people are becoming informed. And if you've got some thing (read partisanship) about Ron Paul, get over your bad self! This is simply too important!

The Sinking Popularity Of The Fed

This mostly glowing commentary in the current issue of The Economist about the recent success of one of their own - the renomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last week - contains the following news about the central bank's slide in opinion polls.

Professional economists have applauded Mr Bernanke’s actions, but the public has not. The Fed’s approval rating stands at just 30%, lower than any other federal agency and down from 53% in 2003, according to Gallup. Partly this is because the economy has faced a devastating recession that the Fed was meant to prevent. But it also reflects discomfort with the Fed’s meddling in private markets.

The Federal Reserve is truly the most important "issue" of our time, because the Federal Reserve is the tool that finances the abusive growth in government that we're witnessing today!

We Can End the Fed

What unprecedented anti-Fed days these have been! We had our Audit the Fed Congressional hearing, in which the central bank – for the first time in 96 years – was put on the defensive. End the Fed was chosen as a Main Selection of the Conservative Book Club; this book, the first anti-central banking bestseller in American history, debuted at #2 on Amazon.com and #6 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

Since 1913, the Fed has had it all its own way: booms and busts, dollar depreciation, redistribution to the government and the big banks from the middle and working classes. But just as Andrew Jackson abolished the predecessor of the Fed, we too can knock over this dangerous institution. End The Fed teaches all the fascinating history, and tells us what we can do for the future. It gives the constitutional, economic, moral, and libertarian arguments against what Jackson called "the Monster."

Ever seen the Fed’s marble palace in Washington, DC, on Constitution Avenue (of all streets!)? That bunch sure knows how to live. I’ve long had a dream of being the auctioneer when the Fed is sold off for private offices, or maybe a Museum of Sound Money! Help me dull its scissors and then break them, so the Fed can’t cut down our dollar’s value. Indeed, I believe that people ought to be ashamed to work at such a place; an institution that has done so much damage to American prosperity and freedom, as well as to the freedom and prosperity of the whole world. For example, I want no more bowing and scraping to the Fed chairman when he goes to Capitol Hill to peddle his nonsense. He is just a bureaucrat, albeit a disastrous one.

Love him or hate him ... Ron Paul is the ONLY Republican in Washington doing anything of significance for "we the people."