Say What?! Bachman economics

It seems like with this current field of GOP candidates, that I have infinite material to work with, and today proves no different. Michele Bachman, the woman who can’t get basic American history right is at it again, this time failing Economics 101. ThinkProgess reports that at a campaign rally, Bachmann made the ultimate in gaffs, saying that $1 today should be equal to $1 in 1911. You need to see this to believe this:

The shorthand way of describing to you what quantitative easing is is a license to print money without any value behind it…In the last two years of the Obama administration, if you pull a dollar out of your pocket, you have lost 14 percent of the value of that dollar. That means the federal government has stolen that money from you… They’ve been printing essentially valueless money and flooding it into the money supply. I don’t stand for that. A dollar in 2011 should be the same as a dollar in 1911. A dollar should be worth a dollar.

I seriously thought she couldn't get any dumber. As the article at ThinkProgress notes, because of natural inflation, $1 in 1911 equals $23 today. Even her argument to go back to the gold standard is null because gold prices fluctuate because of inflation, with prices being at record highs right now. And to blame the president for inflation is absolutely absurd. Inflation always happens, its part of the economic cycle. It happens based on market conditions, not because of one single person. If that was the case, don’t you think the president would change that?

The scary thing about Bachmann is that while she is an idiot when it comes to economics and history, she can make a very convincing argument and is very well articulated. People can take her seriously as opposed to Palin, who you can’t take anything she says seriously. Hopefully people can see through the smoke and mirrors and realize that Bachmann is as bad as Palin.