Palin's Dollar, Zoellick's Gold

Editorial - November 9th, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal

It would be hard to find two more unlikely intellectual comrades than Robert Zoellick, the World Bank technocrat, and Sarah Palin, the populist conservative politician. But in separate interventions yesterday, the pair roiled the global monetary debate in complementary and timely fashion.

The former Alaskan Governor showed sound political and economic instincts by inveighing forcefully against the Federal Reserve's latest round of quantitative easing. According to the prepared text of remarks that she released to National Review online, Mrs. Palin also exhibited a more sophisticated knowledge of monetary policy than any major Republican this side of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan.

Stressing the risks of Fed "pump priming," Mrs. Palin zeroed in on the connection between a "weak dollar—a direct result of the Fed's decision to dump more dollars onto the market"—and rising oil and food prices. She also noted the rising world alarm about the Fed's actions, which by now includes blunt comments by Germany, Brazil, China and most of Asia, among many others.

"We don't want temporary, artificial economic growth brought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings," the former GOP Vice Presidential nominee said. "We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It's the only way we can get our economy back on the right track."

Mrs. Palin's remarks may have the beneficial effect of bringing the dollar back to the center of the American political debate, not to mention of the GOP economic platform. Republican economic reformers of the 1970s and 1980s—especially Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp—understood the importance of stable money to U.S. prosperity.

Repeatedly Governor Sarah Palin comes out with intelligent and insightful comments on complicated topics, and the left wing press ignores them and insists she is stupid. After the constant Alinsky attacks going back to the week she was made the GOP Vice Presidential candidate, professional politicians on both the left and right have been petrified they will have to deal with her on honest terms.

There are reasons she was the most popular Governor in America before the Alinsky attacks began. There are reasons she was successful in getting a pipeline project completed after it was delayed by political corruption for over 20 years. There are reasons why the Alaskan "Corrupt Bastards Club" of GOP officials still despise her to this day. There are reasons not a single one of the lies she was charged with during the attempts to malign her with ethics violations was ever successful.

Those reasons are the same reasons her supporters still believe in her. She is smart, committed, honest and cares about our nation. She has proved repeatedly she is a good manager from the time she was mayor.

You have to wonder what is the logic of the people who malign her with insults while never ever giving specifics of her shortcomings. Actually you have to wonder about the corruption of their intentions more than their logic.