REP. PAUL RYAN == MORON

Paul Krugman pointed out that the newest "boy genius" among the House GOP is in fact a tool:

But Mr. Ryan is sure that the dollar is being debased and won’t take no for an answer. In an attempt to create a gotcha moment, he waved a copy of a newspaper bearing the headline “Inflation Worries Spread” at the Fed chairman. But the gotcha actually went the other way. As Mr. Bernanke immediately pointed out, the article was about inflation in China and other emerging markets, not in the United States. And the Fed chairman declared, correctly, that “inflation made here in the U.S. is very, very low.”

I do trust Krugman but this was so frigging lame that I had to look up the transcript of the hearing¹ (h/t LexisNexis):

P. RYAN: So if we get this wrong and if -- and if credibility is diminished because of these moves, and if expectations form around price increases, then we do have a big interest rate problem.

And if you look through our fiscal side of it, just raising interest rates under a normal average predictions would just be vicious to our balance sheet.

The interest payments alone in the current budget window, which assumes extremely low interest rates for the decade, go from $200 billion this year to $1 trillion at the end of the budget window.

If interest rates move up from their current projections -- which I think long bonds are about 4 percent to 5 percent throughout the budget window -- that's about $1 trillion to anywhere from $6 trillion in extra interest payments.

So basically this is -- this is all based on confidence that what you're doing and saying will actually be done. And confidence and credibility is -- is just critical in all of us.

What I'm trying to get at is -- you know, just take a look at today's Wall Street Journal: "Inflation Worries Spread."

You know, you talk -- you've got basically -- "inflation jitters spread to emerging markets.

"In Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, the government reported Tuesday that inflation is accelerating."

You know, we've got inflation popping up in other parts of the world. After all, many countries peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar. And my basic question is, to what extent do you think the Fed's monetary policy stance has contributed to these global inflationary pressures? Has this contributed to the hot money flows abroad that have led to some of these imbalances that are not fully appreciating when we examine the costs and benefits of your current QE2 monetary policy stance?

BERNANKE: Mr. Chairman, your first sentence under the headline was very revealing. The inflation is taking place in emerging markets because that's where the growth is. That's where the demand is. And that's where, in some cases, the economies are overheating.

It's the responsibly of the emerging markets to set their monetary and exchange rate policies in a way that will keep their economies on a stable path.

The increases in oil prices, for example, are entirely due, according to the International Energy Agency, to increases in demand coming from emerging markets. They're not coming from United States.

So the bulk of the increase in commodity prices is a global phenomenon. In the United States, inflation made here in the U.S. is very, very low.

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REP. PAUL D. RYAN HOLDS A HEARING ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
February 9, 2011 Wednesday
EVENT DATE: February 9, 2011
TYPE: COMMITTEE HEARING
LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.
COMMITTEE: HOUSE COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
SPEAKER: REP. PAUL D. RYAN, CHAIRMAN