HeritageFarm wrote:
All of what Romney said may not be 100% correct, but what he was correct. The Federal Reserve is just dumping money on the economy and messing everything up. They need to just butt out.
That part is correct; but the Fed was inflating the money supply under Bush also, and most previous administrations since WWII. They have been able to get away with it as long as the U.S. Dollar was the World's Reserve Currency, and the U.S. economy was able to grow sufficiently to absorb the increased supply of dollars available.
But, a declining dollar was the reason why the BRIC Nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) were working through the theorizing of creating a new world currency to replace the Dollar and the Euro for international trades. They've been aware for years that the U.S. has been paying less and less for more and more imports from the rest of the world, but as long as the Dollar was the standard for world currency, everyone has been stuck getting payed with devaluing dollars. As a sidenote, it's worth pointing out that some critical analysts of U.S. foreign policy point to Saddam Hussein's decision to switch from the Dollar to the Euro for Iraqi oil trades as the no.1 reason why Bush ordered the overthrow and the invasion of Iraq. If other oil-producing-less than friendly nations followed his example, that could have started the economic crisis during his administration. The difference now is that the U.S. debt to GDP ratio has grown so large under Obama, that U.S. suppliers are getting concerned about whether or not it is going to be worth the hassle. And we are beginning to see signs that economic growth has stalled out even in China, where REAL GDP may be zero for this year, rather than the official 8% claim that importers and exporters don't take seriously anyway.
What all this boils down to, and the part that people focused on money seem to be blissfully unaware of, is that economics is constrained by real world factors like energy and resource costs. Neither liberal economic theory/nor conservative economic theory is going to be worth anything more than campaign rhetoric now, because they are just different methods of running a capitalist economic system, which by its very nature is chaotic and unable to function at all in a world where natural limits to growth prevent further 3 to 5% increases in GDP. Once all the liberals and the conservatives realize that they are not going to get payed back in full on money loaned out today, then that banking crisis that started four years ago will be right back again, except there will likely be no way of fooling anyone that they will get the future returns they are expecting.