The Value of a Buck

Representative Paul Ryan will work overtime to try to block the Fed's latest "brilliant" move. Hasn't the Federal Reserve done enough already?

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan represents a blue-collar district that was pummeled by the recession - its auto factories shut down, its workforce fractured by some of the highest unemployment rates in Wisconsin.

Yet when the Janesville Republican looks at the Federal Reserve's latest effort to create jobs by pumping $600 billion into the economy, he wants none of it.

Ryan and other conservative critics argue that the Fed's strategy to buy Treasury securities - and, in turn, create a new cycle of lending and hiring - amounts to little more than printing money and diluting the dollar's value.

The Fed has no business cheapening the nation's currency, Ryan says, even if a weaker dollar might provide a short-term elixir for struggling industries in his southeastern Wisconsin district by making American exports less expensive overseas while increasing the prices of imports sold in the United States.

"There is nothing more insidious that a government can do to its people than to debase its currency," Ryan said.