Boehner got into discussing monetary matters recently, and the consensus is he should stick to what he knows and leave monetary matters to those who know anything about it.
"John Boehner’s remarks on recent financial events have attracted a lot of unfavorable comment, and they should. Actually, I think even the stuff most commentators have shied away from — he talks about the Fed “deflating” when I think he means either inflating or debasing, or possibly is doing a Sarah Palin and merging the two — is significant. I mean, he’s the Speaker of the House at a time when economic issues are paramount; shouldn’t he have basic familiarity with simple economic terms?"
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/debased-economics/?gwh=3CB74D9D3CFB9B7CEE8D9CEBA50EFD79
Then again, what does Speaker Boehner actually know anything about? Surely not passing legislation that has a prayer of ever becoming law.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/boehners-boner-his-farm-bill-fails-in.html
Krugman piggybacks from Boehner's monetary boners to a discussion of: you guessed it, the Market Monetarists. I love it.
"But the main thing is that he’s clinging to a story about monetary policy that has been refuted by experience about as thoroughly as any economic doctrine of the past century. Ever since the Fed began trying to respond to the financial crisis, we’ve had dire warnings about looming inflationary disaster. When the GOP took the House, it promptly called Bernanke in to lecture him about debasing the dollar. Yet inflation has stayed low, and the dollar has remained strong — just as Keynesians said would happen.
"John Boehner’s remarks on recent financial events have attracted a lot of unfavorable comment, and they should. Actually, I think even the stuff most commentators have shied away from — he talks about the Fed “deflating” when I think he means either inflating or debasing, or possibly is doing a Sarah Palin and merging the two — is significant. I mean, he’s the Speaker of the House at a time when economic issues are paramount; shouldn’t he have basic familiarity with simple economic terms?"
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/debased-economics/?gwh=3CB74D9D3CFB9B7CEE8D9CEBA50EFD79
Then again, what does Speaker Boehner actually know anything about? Surely not passing legislation that has a prayer of ever becoming law.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/boehners-boner-his-farm-bill-fails-in.html
Krugman piggybacks from Boehner's monetary boners to a discussion of: you guessed it, the Market Monetarists. I love it.
"But the main thing is that he’s clinging to a story about monetary policy that has been refuted by experience about as thoroughly as any economic doctrine of the past century. Ever since the Fed began trying to respond to the financial crisis, we’ve had dire warnings about looming inflationary disaster. When the GOP took the House, it promptly called Bernanke in to lecture him about debasing the dollar. Yet inflation has stayed low, and the dollar has remained strong — just as Keynesians said would happen.
Yet there hasn’t been a hint of rethinking from leading Republicans; as far as anyone can tell, they still get their monetary ideas from Atlas Shrugged."
"Oh, and this is another reminder to the “market monetarists”, who think that they can be good conservatives while advocating aggressive monetary expansion to fight a depressed economy: sorry, but you have no political home. In fact, not only aren’t you making any headway with the politicians, even mainstream conservative economists like Taylor and Feldstein are finding ways to advocate tighter money despite low inflation and high unemployment. And if reality hasn’t dented this dingbat orthodoxy yet, it never will."
Sumner no doubt would point to his interviews at National Review and on Larry Kudlow's radio show and argue cynically, that the GOP will be all for NGDP level targeting once they get back in power.
When exactly does Sumner think that might be? It will be a cold day in hell till that happens if they keep talking about rape victims and abortion.
P.S, I do think that one argument you can make for Sumner is that he's too shrewd to construe his project as merely trying to win over the Republican party. He is not unaware of the party's dysfunction and ideally wants 'Market Monetarist' policies to be followed, whichever party is in power even if in some things-like supplyside arguments, he's more with the GOP. He's not as partisan as say Milton Friedman was. Morgan Warstler has criticized him for wasting time with the liberals. but my take on it is that Sumner has made an accurate assessment of the best political routes to victory, circa today-the GOP was on the ascendancy in Friedman's time.
This makes sense. Reaganism was only truly victorious when Clinton largely accepted its framework-similarly when Tony Blair accepted the basic Thatcherite framework; or when Dwight Eisenhower accepted the New Deal. He didn't seek to roll it back and, indeed, expanded it in significant ways.
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