As John Steele Gordon rightly points out, Ben Bernanke’s latest attempt to bail out a failing economy by manipulating interest rates isn’t likely to be met with any more success than his first two tries. Some Democrats may think the Federal Reserve’s decision to print more money will inflate the economy enough to get President Obama re-elected. The assumption is that it will cause a rise in the stock market that will be interpreted as a sign that the recovery has finally succeeded. However, the result of another dose of inflationary economics, compounded by growing debt, unemployment and less than 2 percent growth may be another recession that will come on the heels of the current anemic recovery.
The constant refrain coming from the administration and its defenders has been that a change of course away from the president’s reliance on trying to spend our way out of the economic ditch would be a return to the failed Republican policies of the past that created the problem in the first place. But as James Pethokoukis writes at the American Enterprise Institute blog, it is cheap money and too much debt that caused the so-called Great Recession that the president inherits. That recession ended in the summer of 2009. It was followed by a recovery for which the president once took credit. But the feeble nature of that revival is something he still blames on his predecessor. Thanks to the continuation of the spending and debt binge that took place over the last four years, the country may soon be faced with another Great Recession no matter who wins in November. But it is not likely that most Americans will be willing to blame that one on George W. Bush.
