I agree with Republican Senator Corker that inflation is a danger in the future. But inflation doesn’t win the hearts and minds of most Americans right now. No one’s worried about it except economists and economics geeks.
The death of the community and regional bank, however, does bother people. As does the printing of money that goes straight into the 5 biggest banks in history . . . and stays there.
The US Government bailed out those 5 “too big to fail” banks in 2008 and it’s been propping them up with our money ever since. That was one of the driving forces behind the birth of the Tea Party movement in February 2009.
Four years later, the Fed, Congress, and the White House still support banks whose managers cannot operate at a profit. And the only Senator to point out the lunacy of this practice is a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts?
I realize that the Democrats are far worse practitioners of crony capitalism than the Republicans. That doesn’t excuse the GOP.
If the Republicans want people to see them as in-touch with the mood of the country, they should attack crony capitalism relentlessly. Republicans must advance sound macro economics, but they must also stress cases that win over voters. Future inflation won’t do that, but crony capitalism will.
By failing to gage what messages will work, the GOP is in the odd position of standing for nothing while being perceived as too extreme.