SC Governor Mark Sanford Compares Obama to Mugabe, Doesn’t Realize There’s No Inflation
I was talking a couple of days ago with a guy I generally think of as sensible, if misguidedly right-wing on economic issues, and was surprised to learn that he has a positive attitude toward South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who’s a moron. Here’s Glenn Thrush reporting on Governor Sanford being ridiculous:
“What you’re doing is buying into the notion that if we just print some more money that we don’t have, send it to different states – we’ll create jobs… If that’s the case why isn’t Zimbabwe a rich place?”…”why isn’t Zimbabwe just an incredibly prosperous place. Cause they’re printing money they don’t have and sending it around to their different – I don’t know the towns in Zimbabwe but that same logic is being applied there with little effect.”
Not only is this comparison really offensive to people living in Zimbabwe and struggling with a horrible situation, far worse than the misery Sanford is trying to inflict on the population of South Carolina by refusing to extend unemployment benefits, but the ignorance on display here is really appalling. Sanford’s like a guy standing next to a burning building worrying that it might rain tomorrow. There’s no inflation right now in the United States. None whatsoever. It’s actually a big problem, because it means that our standard macroeconomic stabilization tool—federal reserve open market operations—doesn’t work. Serious inflation would be bad, of course, and Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation would be ruinous, but some increase in inflation would be helpful. It would serve as a real cut in interest rates and help to spur growth. And long before inflation reached problem levels, the Fed could increase nominal rates to head the problem off. Sanford’s just out to sea on this.
45 Responses to “SC Governor Mark Sanford Compares Obama to Mugabe, Doesn’t Realize There’s No Inflation”
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Of course he wasn’t making these arguments when it was George Bush doing the printing of money. Why is that? Why weren’t conservatives comparing Bush to Mugabe?
March 12th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Deflation is the concern right now, and it’s troubling that a Governor of a state with large unemployment doesn’t understand this.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Boy, Benny, your question really has me scratching my head. What can the answer be? Anyone?
March 12th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Aren’t we borrowing the money?
You only print money when you can’t borrow any more.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Thank you, dantonj.
Britain is printing money, not the U.S.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
к прочтению…
I was talking a couple of days ago with a guy I generally think of as sensible, if misguidedly right-wing on economic issues, and[...]…
March 12th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
First of all, the Fed is printing money, and has printed quite a bit of it recently.
Second, how about it being offensive to Obama? He doesn’t choose the example of Argentina or Weimer Germany, instead he goes for an association that implicitly calls Obama a corrupt, quasi-dicatorial leader of a Third World African country on the verge of collapse.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Hear the dog whistle, people. Mugabe is a black man, Obama is a black man. Mugabe is a bad man, Obama must be a bad man, too. Now wasn’t that easy?
March 12th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
First of all, the Fed is printing money, and has printed quite a bit of it recently.
Uh…I think you meant to say ‘adding liquidity’.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Hear the dog whistle, people.
Dog whistle? More like a police whistle.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Hear the dog whistle, people.
Thank you. Sanford illustrates why NC went to Obama and SC went to Jefferson Davis.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Hey, weren’t the markets rejecting Obama’s stimulus plan? Didn’t conservatives tell me that just a few days ago?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090312/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/wall_street
Wall Street rally? For three days? Obviously it is the market’s rejection of Obama’s budget. Right? Right?
March 12th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Benny’s answer is that when Bush was president we were living during a time of war. So for conservatives this meant that because we were at war it was fine to do things that might not otherwise be done like hike government spending.
Of course now, the tables have turned, we are no longer at war, but facing the wrath of a “socialist” president. It is rank hypocrisy at its worst!! I don’t remember Bush being called a socialist for farm subsidies or the prescription drug bill among other spending measures.
As a native South Carolinian, I’m also taking special delight in watching Sanford position himself for a presidential run. The man has unwavering ambition. My brother-in-law runs a state agency, knows Sanford well, and told me years ago that he thought Sanford would run for pres one day. He is no match for Obama.
As for screwing people over in the palmetto state, SC is one of the top five states for unemployment. But people and the national press need to remember that SC remains one of the reddest states in the country.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Benny, be careful!
March 12th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Sandord is an idiot, but pretending that the government printing all this money isn’t going to lead to inflation is foolishness. Of course it will. Inflation is coming in the next year or two and it’s gonna make things very tough.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Mike:
No, they’re adding liquidity and they’re increasing the general money stock in circulation. Take a look:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/
Jebus Christo:
If we’re dealing with deflation, and a credit crunch, isn’t a moderate amount of inflation a good thing?
March 12th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
“Inflation is coming in the next year or two and it’s gonna make things very tough.”
Sorry, but you’re going to have to explain why going from the current zero rate of inflation to the historical normal rate will “make things very tough”, or why that couldn’t easily be reined in once it happens since the interest rate is currently 0. Which of course were the same points made in the post you apparently didn’t read.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Sanford illustrates why NC went to Obama and SC went to Jefferson Davis.
NC is, of course, widely known for its ability to resist the dog whistle appeals of racist politicians.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
With the amount of money the government has pushed into the marketplace, moderate inflation would be a dream – the more likelihood is that it will be severe inflation, which will be very destructive.
I’m not saying the government shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing – despite not liking it, it seems the only sensible thing to do to save the world economy from collapsing upon itself. But to think there won’t be big inflationary consequences is naive.
March 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
S.C. might be a red state now, but the amazing increase in unemployment may quickly change things. S.C. is a great example of the hodge-podge of underdevelopment in developed countries. It is a poster-child of using tax breaks to bring in industry that it cannot generate endogenously, having a badly educated population, underinvesting in higher education, a severe problem with racism, etc. Corsica in France, Southern Italy – you can find the same thing elsewhere. In Dixie, due to the racism, the politics swings to the right, as there is enough whites to do the swinging. But, because it is so dependent on other economies – for instance, Japanese car manufacturers – it has no leverage to stop the pain. It can only beg. Two centuries of a semi-feudal culture has created a fairly servile population, which projects anger about its existential condition by finding the usual modern devil figures, but I think modernity has penetrated enough that this can no longer be relied upon by the GOP. You can bash gays all you want, but who is going to bring in money and create the resort atmosphere around Charleston?
If the Dems are Dean-smart, they will start now, right now, in targeting S.C. Sanford has put a target on his head. Read S.C. newspapers – even the State House and Senate GOP is repudiating him.
Sanford, rather than Limbaugh, should be the face the Dems plaster upon the GOP. Cause he is real. And extremely, extremely hateful.
March 12th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Sandord is an idiot, but pretending that the government printing all this money isn’t going to lead to inflation is foolishness. Of course it will. Inflation is coming in the next year or two and it’s gonna make things very tough.
This is not exactly clear. Reserve requirements is a very complex and arcane phenomenom. The banks created money through leverage that they did not actually have. Much of this money was already spent. If all we are doing is printing money to cover these debts of money that was already introduced into the system, it is very possible that the results will not be inflationary.
Or in less words: it is possible that the inflation has already happened, and that printing more money, provided that it is used in very specific circumstances, will not lead to more inflation.
The problem is that no one actually knows if this is the case or not.
March 12th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
NC is, of course, widely known for its ability to resist the dog whistle appeals of racist politicians.
Oh, for sure. But I’m not sure if the demographic changes that helped tip NC into the Obama column will migrate further south, and if they do, you’ll see Georgia switch first. There’s a reason why SC elects people like Sanford (and Jim DeMint) to statewide office, while NC went for Blue Dogs like Bev Perdue and Kay Hagan.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
If Sanford had the inflation meme in mind, then he’d be more likely to use the argument with reference to Federal Reserve policy. After all, it’s the Fed that controls the money supply and that, in this country, actually does print the money. Using it to discuss the stimulus spending reflects ignorance of the way in which the money supply mechanism works in the US. But it does allow him to imply Obama = Mugabe for his audience.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Mugabe. The new Hitler.
March 12th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Again, many people are missing the second step in all this–the idea will be to take the extra money back out once we are well into recovery and inflation is becoming a concern.
What if inflation becomes a concern before we start to recover?
What if all of this spending and Federal Reserve credit creation simply turns a deflationary recession/depression into an inflationary one?
March 12th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
You all laugh, right up until Obama starts sending his Luo tribesman in to kick out all the white farmers.
March 12th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Here’s hoping he wins a Political Darwin Award. He certainly looks promising from here.
March 12th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Or, if you’re really (not just rhetorically) concerned with inflation and/or debt, you just tax. Then you don’t have to print money (no hyperinflation) or borrow money (no debt for the next generation).
March 12th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Is Sanford “out to sea” on this, or a really racist idiot who thinks he can just name a big, black African bogeyman and try to tie same to Barack Obama.
I agree that Sanford is utterly clueless about the economic difference between the US and Zimbabwe, but he may have made the comparison from a much more base and ignominious place.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
What if inflation becomes a concern before we start to recover?
What if all of this spending and Federal Reserve credit creation simply turns a deflationary recession/depression into an inflationary one?
If we’re still in a severe recession because of a lack of demand, why would businesses raise their prices? You raise your prices when your inventories are moving at a brisk clip and you have enough customers that you think the market can bear more, not when you can’t find buyers. Similarly, if you’re a worker, you probably aren’t inclined to ask for a big raise if your company has a hiring freeze and is trying to lay people off. Supply and demand, supply and demand, says the parrot trained as an economist. If demand is low, why would there be inflation? If demand is high, why would we still be in a recession?
There is the possibility of an unforseen supply shock which would lead to inflation without increased demand, but I don’t think it would be reasonable for the Fed to base its policy on that contingency.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:56 am
By the inflation hawks’ standards, the Great Depression should have been our greatest economic triumph. At least if the Depression happened today, they’d say something like “Never mind the 20% unemployment. We’re in grave danger of Weimar-like hyperinflation that’s sure to come from the New Deal and FDR’s taking us off the gold standard”
In other news, houses are too expensive and too many Americans have jobs.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Sanford is referring to the inflation that is sure to come in the next few years as a result of Obama’s policies. Also, most governors are salivating over the prospect of lapping up the stimulus funds because most governors are whores.
March 24th, 2009 at 5:35 am
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April 8th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Wait 10 to 15 years from now when it takes a bucket of money to buy a loaf of bread. Governor Sanford, Senator DeMint and Colburn, and Ron Paul have the best interest of this country in every action they take. The rest of the elected fools are there for self-serving reasons, power, fame and money. Of course the elected fools are elected by fools, so live your life under the masterfull minds of the elite and see who eats well. Does the names Kim Jong Il and Robert Mugabe sound familiar? Soon to exit the country many died for and now run by fools, including Bush.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
LOVE your site, will visit again
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