Matt Yglesias

Franken Wins Again

From the Star Tribune:

After a trial spanning nearly three months, Norm Coleman’s attempt to reverse Al Franken’s lead in the recount of the U.S. Senate election was soundly rejected today by a three-judge panel that dismissed the Republican’s lawsuit.

The judges swept away Coleman’s argument that the election and its aftermath were fraught with systemic errors that made the results invalid.

Apparently Coleman has more fruitless appeals to make, so the seating of Al Franken can continue to be delayed.

It’s worth remarking a bit on the incredible solidarity the Minnesota GOP is showing with their colleagues’ broader interest in obstructing the inevitable here. Representatives John Kline, Erik Paulsen, and Michele Bachmann, along with Governor Tim Pawlenty, are all seeing their quest to get Minnesota’s fair share of pork and other parochial interests undermined by the fact that their state only has one Senator. Normally, I would expect politicians in that kind of situation to put the interests of themselves and their state ahead of the interests of their political party. In general, the level of party discipline that the Republicans have been able to muster in 2009 (thus far) is really impressive and goes against a lot of conventional wisdom about how the American political system operates. I hope some smart political scientists are doing some thinking about this.

Reps Bachmann and Hoekstra Continue to Foster “Global Currency” Conspiracy Theories

Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) continues to fight the good fight against the plan to replace the United States dollar with a new global currency. It’s true that there is no such plan, but her bill to ban the Treasury Department from implementing it already has 31 co-sponsors. And Dave Weigel reports that non-cosponsor Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) might be getting on the bandwagon:

“I’m watching Neil Cavuto,” said Hoesktra, “and I see [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner is talking about how he might be OK with a world currency. I don’t think Americans are going to be comfortable with that. You’re going to see things that people perceive as eroding American sovereignty—this is something that’s clearly un-American. I mean, here’s the secretary of the Treasury, and instead of defending the United States and defending our currency, he’s saying he might be open to a world currency. What does that mean? It means turning our currency over to the UN.”

For the millionth time, the proposal under discussion was for other countries—i.e., not the United States—to start moving away from near-exclusive use of the dollar as a reserve currency. This has nothing to do with American sovereignty or the United Nations. And, again, neither congress nor the Treasury Department can force other countries to use the dollar as a reserve asset.

Members of the opposition might want to consider spending more time figuring out what their budget proposals say and less time pushing weird conspiracy theories.

Bachmann and Beck Double-Down on Currency Conspiracy Theory

Michele Bachmann was recently on Glenn Beck’s radio show, so that two of the right-wing’s most prominent nutters could talk, inaccurately, about currency issues:

BACHMANN: Let me tell you, there’s something that’s happening this week in Congress that could be the eventual unravelling for our freedom, and it’s this. I had asked the Treasury Secretary and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chair, if they would categorically denounce–

BECK: I know.

BACHMANN: –taking the United States off of the dollar and putting us on an international global currency. Because as you know, Russia, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, many national have lined up now and called for an international currency, a One World currency. And they want to get off the dollar as the reserve currency.

BECK: Most people don’t understand what that means.

Here, for once, Beck is on the money. As we’ll shortly see, neither he nor Bachmann understands what that means:

BACHMANN: What that means is that all of the countries of the world would have a single currency. We would give up the dollar as our currency and we would just go with a One World currency. And now for the first time, we’re seeing major countires like China, India, Russia, countries like that, calling for a one world currency and they want this discussion to occur at the G20. So I asked both the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve chair if they would categorically denounce this. The reason why is because if we give up the dollar as our standard, and co-mingle the value of the dollar with the value of coinage in Zimbabwe, that dilutes our money supply. We lose country over our economy. And economic liberty is inextricably entwined with political liberty. Once you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom. And then we are no more, as an exceptional nation, as we always have been. So this is imperative.

This falsehoods here are coming so fast and loose that it’s hard to know where to start here. But to get to the main point, most countries hold “reserves” of various kinds—foreign currency and gold. Most countries, right now, primarily hold dollars. Euros are also popular, and Yen and British Pounds somewhat less so. The United States of America does not, obviously, hold any dollars in our reserves. We actually have quite a lot of gold. And different countries vary their practices in this regard. But most countries mostly hold their reserves in dollars. So the dollar is, in effect, the “global reserve currency.” The IMF also issues something called Special Drawing Rights that countries can use as a reserve asset. SDRs work as a kind of meta-currency, with their value based on a basket of major world currencies. A Chinese official suggested that it might be good for the world to tilt away from such a heavy reliance on dollars as the reserve currency of choice, since this leaves countries exposed to policy decisions in the United States, and toward something more SDR-like that would be balanced between dollars and euros and yen and pounds and so forth.

This has nothing to do with replacing the dollars in your bank account—or Michele Bachmann’s—with a new currency. Nor would it be the creation of a One World Currency. And to be clear, while the United States could prevent the IMF from formally creating any kind of new internationalized reserve currency, there’s nothing we can do to stop foreign countries from weighting their reserve baskets away from dollars. It’s just not up to us.

At any rate, my colleague Ali Frick found this remarkable exchange and has the audio for your pleasure:

Keep in mind that these aren’t just two weirdos hiding out in a cabin somewhere. Beck has a show on a major cable news network and Bachmann has a seat in congress.