Mitt Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), criticized the Federal Reserve’s latest action intended to spur the economy Saturday, saying that it amounted to a ‘bailout’ of the economy for President Obama.
Speaking at a campaign event in Florida, Ryan said the Fed’s decision to take further action signaled that Obama’s economic policies had not worked adequately. Since the Fed had to take stronger action, he said, it was essentially as if they were bailing out Obama and paying for his mistakes.
“We heard that the Federal Reserve is coming with a new bailout,” Ryan said. “This matters. So the Federal Reserve is basically saying that we don’t have a recovery. Obamanomics didn’t work.”
On Thursday, the Federal Reserve announced a new round of quantitative easing, a program under which the central bank buys up billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities to thrust more money into circulation. That announcement came one week after the latest jobs report showed lower-than-expected job growth in August, an indication that the economic recovery may be slowing. Yet in a change from the past two rounds of quantitative easing, the Fed indicated that it would not cap the number of purchases it makes, instead opting to continue the process indefinitely until the economy picks up.
Critics of the decision argued that it would lead to inflation that would do enough long term harm to offset any benefits from an immediate cash infusion. And Ryan, who has previously criticized the Federal Reserve for taking aggressive actions to stimulate the economy, reitereated that position on Saturday, calling the latest action “insidious.”
“We don’t need sugar high economics. We don’t need synthetic money creation,” Ryan said. “We need economic growth. We want wealth creation. We don’t want to print money. We want opportunity and growth. And when they do this to our money, it undermines the credibility of our money.”
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