In one week the voters of the 7th district will send a self-styled “economist” named David Brat to the House of Representatives. I am amused that Mr. Brat advertised himself as an economist but advocates policies that have already been tried and have proven to be at best ineffective and at worst disastrous.
When running in the primary, Mr. Brat advocated auditing the Federal Reserve. Perhaps this self-styled economics wizard has missed the years of debate concerning the Federal Reserve’s policy of buying Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. The numbers are available for all to see who have any interest, on the Fed’s website. Perhaps Dave’s real problem is that he believes that the black helicopters that the United Nations will use to institute “world government” are secretly hidden in the basement of the New York Federal Reserve on Liberty Street in downtown NYC.
Of course Brat wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but offers no reasonable alternative. Dave wants to allow sales of health insurance across state lines, but this would only encourage a race by insurance companies to the bottom of the insurance barrel. I wonder how all of those folks from Hartford Connecticut and Manhattan will adjust to life in Mississippi?
Dave wants to have a self-styled balance-budget amendment. This guy really live in a Disneyland bubble. For instance, a recent article in the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics strongly makes the case that more deficit spending in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis would have led to a much stronger recovery. Brat’s policy of supporting a balanced-budget amendment strongly echoes the restraints placed on European governments by the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam that are currently supported by the Germans. This extreme-type of infallible austerity has led to levels of unemployment in the Euro zone that are often at 10% for the general population and youth unemployment that approaches 50% inGreece, Portugal and Spain. It is unbelievable to me that a serious student of economics would loo0k at this unsustainable crisis and advocate the policies that brought it on.
— Les Schreiber
