By Lina Bryce
During an interview on economics last week, 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said that as president he would not agree to any government spending increases and to the delight of many fiscal conservatives, questioned U.S. monetary policy.
Carson said:
Now the only reason that we can sustain that kind of debt is because of our artificial ability to print money, to create what we think is wealth, but it is not wealth, because it’s based upon our faith and credit. You know, we decoupled it from the domestic gold standard in 1933, and from the international gold standard in 1971, and since that time, it’s not based on anything. Why would we be continuing to do that?
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Representing many people who sympathize with the Keynesian monetary policy, Matt O’Brien of The Washington Post quickly aimed his guns at Carson to smack down his daring attempt at “flirting with the idea of a gold standard,”saying, “[Republicans] appear to think that is just another example of activist government, which the economy would be better off without. They also believe that money should be immutable, like gold, and not something the government creates.”
Ryan McMaken of Mises.org identifies O’Brien’s attack as having a problem understanding free-market economics and swiftly defends Carson’s monetary policy observation.
“So O’Brien’s problem is with the fact that the market does not follow his Keynesian models on how interest rates should behave. Like most self-proclaimed ‘economic wonks’ in DC, O’Brien can’t imagine a world in which the Fed is limited in what it can do to respond to a recession,”McMaken writes.
He concluded, “Perhaps it’s time for Mr. O’Brien to read about the Forgotten Depression.”
The soaring debt is no longer an abstruse concept to the average voter, yet, when it comes to this political election, it is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, cloaked by empty promises and giveaways. All of this sponsored by the Federal Reserve.
At least a candidate is talking about it.
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Carson added, “I mean if we continue along this, where does it stop? It never stops. You’re always gonna ask the same question every year. And we’re just gonna keep going down that pathway. That’s one of the things I think that the people are tired of.”
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